• Tar_Alcaran@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    27·
    3 months ago

    As usual with historical word use on short words, you can and should check Google Ngram for the uses, and it seems to almost always be two things:

    A proper name (in this case a type of monkey)

    And

    Bad OCR for the word “both” or “brufh” (which seems to be related to “buffing” or some kind of cleaning, from context?)

    You get the same for frequent use of “fuck” which is almost always “suck” written with a long s.

    • Rayquetzalcoatl@lemmy.worldEnglish
      9·
      3 months ago

      Could “brufh” be “brush”? I know English languages used to use the long S, which looks like an F, and could be related to buffing?

      E: oh sorry just finished reading your comment and you mentioned the long S already 😅

    • Ellia Plissken@lemm.eeEnglish
      7·
      3 months ago

      really? my top google result was that it was used as an abbreviation for brother as a prefix like when referring to a monk

    • BedbugCutlefish@lemmy.worldEnglish
      5·
      3 months ago

      Never actually looked into this, though I did assume majority of these kinds of posts were some kind of bullshit. Thanks for the specifics!

    • PugJesus@lemmy.worldOPMEnglish
      5·
      3 months ago

      In this case, I believe it’s “Bruh” as an alternative spelling of “Br’er”