I recently watched a documentary on Buster Keaton, which said he got his nickname in a certain way. Did this just spring into the language fully formed, like Athena from the head of Zeus? Or is there a more mundane, less divine explanation? It's not clear to me how it got its present meaning from burster or buster (meaning "a gay, roistering blade"), and it certainly doesn't seem likely that it arrived from the meaning of a breaker of horses. "Now listen here, Buster, this means trouble!"' (Leechman): Canadian: adopted, ca. 'A name for anybody whose real name may or may not be known to the speaker. Indeed, Partridge's A Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English (Supplement, page 1042), gives us this:īuster. It's hard to imagine that the two uses are unrelated. Yet it's used as a name much earlier (Buster Keaton, Buster Brown, etc.), and as the title of comic strips and even a play (see below). 199 ― If you go on accusing me of attacking you lot, buster, you’ll have the police to answer to. Shepard in Into Orbit 101 ― ‘OK, Buster,’ I said to myself, ‘you volunteered for this thing.’ġ965 P.
What’s new?’ he heard a woman’s coarse voice say.ġ962 A. friendly or slightly disrespectful ‘mate’, fellowĪnd has a few citations beginning in 1948 (no doubt where Etymonline got its origin date):ġ948 A. (The guitar duo of Rodrigo y Gabriela dedicated one of their tracks, Buster Voodoo, to him.)Īs a generic or playful address to a male, from 1948, American English.Īlso used as a slang form of address, usu. Listen, buster, you can't beat me no matter how hard you try!Īll right, buster, this time you're going down for the count.Īs an aside, few people know that Jimi Hendrix's nickname, which his close friends used, was Buster. It has a range of tonalities, from light to affectionate to grimly confrontational. Americans, at least, have for some time used buster in speech or dialogue as a generic form of address.
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