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Booby   /bˈubi/   Listen
noun
Booby  n.  (pl. boobies)  
1.
A dunce; a stupid fellow.
2.
(Zool.)
(a)
A swimming bird (Sula fiber or Sula sula) related to the common gannet, and found in the West Indies, nesting on the bare rocks. It is so called on account of its apparent stupidity unafraid of men, it allows itself to be caught by a simple and undisguised approach. The name is also sometimes applied to other species of gannets; as, Sula piscator, the red-footed booby; and Sula nebouxii, the blue-footed booby.
(b)
A species of penguin of the antarctic seas.
Booby hatch
(a)
(Naut.), a kind of wooden hood over a hatch, readily removable.
(b)
, an insane asylum. (Colloq.)
Booby hut, a carriage body put upon sleigh runners. (Local, U. S.)
Booby hutch, a clumsy covered carriage or seat, used in the eastern part of England.
Booby prize, an award for the poorest performance in a competition; hence, metaphorically, the recognition of a strikingly inferior or incompetent performance.
Booby trap
(a)
, a schoolboy's practical joke, as a shower bath when a door is opened.
(b)
, any concealed device causing surprise or injury when a usually harmless object is touched; in military operations, typically containing an explosive charge.



adjective
Booby  adj.  Having the characteristics of a booby; stupid.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Booby" Quotes from Famous Books



... was a great pile of you Gauls there, in which there were only you and three others worth taking, among them that great booby, your neighbor—you know, Pierce-Skin. The Cretan archers gave him to me for good measure[17] after the sale. That is the way with you Gauls. You fight so desperately that after a battle live captives are exceedingly rare, and consequently priceless. I ...
— The Brass Bell - or, The Chariot of Death • Eugene Sue

... eyes are ferretting from one side of the road to the other, as if he saw Chouans? The fellow seems to have no legs; the moment his horse is hidden by the carriage, he looks like a duck with its head sticking out of a pate. If that booby can hinder me ...
— The Chouans • Honore de Balzac

... nine in the morning till seven in the evening, were at this time due to Booby and Moggs, and he was at present paying that debt religiously, under a conviction that his various absences at Percycross had been hard upon his father. For there was, in truth, no Booby. Moggs senior, and Moggs junior, constituted the whole firm;—in ...
— Ralph the Heir • Anthony Trollope

... of Fairfield, the miller. An outlandish, ignorant booby, jealous of his sister, Patty, because she "could paint picturs and strum on the harpsicols." He was in love with Fanny, the gypsy, for which "feyther" was angry with him; but, "what argufies feyther's anger?" However, he treated Fanny like a brute, and she said of him, "He has a heart ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer

... we were ready, and some of our company called him a damned lobster backed ——, for wishing to drive us away before every one had his drink. The man was perplexed, and knew not what to do. At last the booby did what he ought to have done at first—forced the beer-seller to drive off his cart. But it is the fate of British officers of higher rank than this one, to think and act at last of that which they ought to have thought, and acted upon at first. They are ...
— A Journal of a Young Man of Massachusetts, 2nd ed. • Benjamin Waterhouse


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