| The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language: Fourth Edition. 2000. |
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| bodacious |
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| SYLLABICATION: | bo·da·cious |
| PRONUNCIATION: |  b -d  sh s |
| VARIANT FORMS: | also bow·da·cious or bar·da·cious (bär-) |
| ADJECTIVE: | 1. Southern & South Midland U.S. Remarkable; prodigious. 2. Audacious; gutsy. | | ADVERB: | 1. Completely; extremely. 2. Audaciously; boldly. | | ETYMOLOGY: | Probably from dialectal boldacious, blend of bold and audacious. | | REGIONAL NOTE: | Popularized in the comic strip Snuffy Smith, bodacious is probably a blend of the words bold and audacious, whose combined senses are evident in the following description of Sevier County, Tennessee, as “the most bodacious display of tourism this side of Anaheim” (Los Angeles Times). A more traditional meaning is “remarkable, prodigious”: “a bodacious amount of smoke” (Springfield MA Morning Union); “the most bodacious tale of hidden treasure” (Lawrence E. Will). Bodacious can also be an adverbial intensifier: “She's so bowdacious unreasonable when she's raised [irritated]” (William T. Thompson). African-American speech in New York City retains this Southernism as bardacious. Joseph Wright's English Dialect Dictionary cites the form boldacious, which is the likely source for bodacious.
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| The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition. Copyright © 2000 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Published by the Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved. |
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