'Bacne' and Other Weird Health Word Origins
"Bacne" is an official contender for the next edition of the Oxford English Dictionary, the editors have confirmed.
That's right. The word used to describe back acne could soon join the ranks of words like "chortle," a word made up by Lewis Carroll, the author who wrote "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland" in the 1860s. Carroll combined "chuckle" and "snort" to create chortle.
Sort of the same, right?
The new potential dictionary addition got us wondering about other weird health words we take for granted. Where did they come from and why are they here?
Click through to find out where "bacne" came from and learn the origins of such words as "booger," "zit," "wart" and more.
Believe it or not, the term "bacne" didn't come from a bunch of mean high school girls.
Not at first, anyway.
It first appeared online in 1994, when people were speculating about whether certain pro wrestlers were on steroids. Back acne was considered a sign of steroid use, and the two words soon morphed into bacne, said Ben Zimmer, a linguist and executive producer of Vocabulary.com who has written about words for The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal.
But by the late 1990s, mean teenagers were saying it, and it often accompanied such subjects as "band geek," said Katherine Martin, head of U.S. dictionaries at Oxford University Press. "Many people other than pro wrestlers get bacne," Martin said with a laugh, explaining that if the word was only used in one community, it wouldn't be dictionary-worthy. "This was a word the world was ready for."
Booger originated with a supernatural figure: the boogeyman, Martin said. (Or a boggart, if you're not speaking American English. Think Harry Potter.)
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'Bacne' and Other Weird Health Word Origins