buster

   This word is thought to be a corruption of ‘burster’, and was applied in the nineteenth century to a big person, especially a child, who was bursting the seams of his clothes. ‘Buster’ might still be vaguely complimentary when addressed to a boy, but in normal usage, almost exclusively by American speakers, it is often an aggressive term when used to a man. ‘Hiya, buster…’ says a man to another, in The Natural, by Bernard Malamud. ‘Roy is the name,’ answers the man concerned, but a moment later he is called ‘buster’ again. ‘Roy knew he would never like the guy,’ Malamud writes. ‘Listen, buster, that’s enough, says a man to someone who is pestering him, in The Philanderer, by Stanley Kauffmann, though in the same novel there is a friendly use of the term between two males. Mary McCarthy, in Birds of America, has a policeman saying ‘Pipe down, buster’ to a boy, but the boy’s mother says: ‘My son asked you a question, and his name is not Buster.’ ‘That’s enough out of you too, lady,’ says the policeman. Perhaps American policemen are especially fond of the word. Another one in An American Dream, by Norman Mailer, tells the hero: ‘Don’t piss on me, buster. Just sit down and dictate a little confession.’ The mother’s remark, quoted above, had some point to it in that ‘Buster’ can be a nickname, and for that matter, a name given at birth. (Even in England a Buster Smith was named in 1946.) Joseph Francis Keaton became world famous as Buster Keaton, his nickname, according to one legend, having been given him by Harry Houdini when Keaton was only three years old. He may at that time have been plumper than he later became. Lydia, by E.V.Cunningham, has: ‘Is there an attendant in there?’ ‘We’re not the Waldorf, buster.’ ‘And don’t call me buster and don’t crack wise with me.’ Arthur Hailey’s Hotel has a man who says: ‘Whoever you are, buster, you’re just a hotel slob and I don’t take orders from you.’ The novel Like Any Other Man, by Patrick Boyle, which is set in Ireland, has a woman using ‘buster’ to her lover in a kind of aggressively intimate way: ‘Whipping off her knickers, she would fling them at him, urging: “Come on, buster, you win.”’