bumdockdousse
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English
[edit]Noun
[edit]bumdockdousse (uncountable)
- a children's game in which three people attempt to kick each other on the bottom (rare) (obsolete) [1653]
The word is Thomas Urquhart's rendering of Rabelais's word pimpompet in Gargantua, vol. 1 ch. 22 (1534; ed. Duchat, 1761).
The French word is defined in Cotgrave Dictionarie of the French and English Tongues (1611) as ‘a kinde of game wherein three hit each other on the bumme with one of their feet’; subsequent scholars and lexicographers have typically followed Cotgrave.
References
[edit]Oxford English Dictionary, s.v. “bumdockdousse (n.),” July 2023, https://doi.org/10.1093/OED/5303456921.