boofing

Boofing was popularized during the 1980s, a decade in which it made multiple pop culture appearances. It appears to come from butt-fuck, shortened to bu-fu and then boof.

Bu-fu appeared in rock legend Frank Zappa’s 1982 Valley Girl. At one point in the song, the stereotypical valley girl sings about her teacher, whom she calls Mr. Bu-Fu.

One of the love interests in the 1985 film Teen Wolf was named Lisa “Boof” Marconi. While the reasoning behind the name was never mentioned explicitly in the film, it was seen largely as a sort of inside joke that younger viewers would pick up on.

On a more local level, boof appeared in a May 1984 copy of Rice University’s student publication, The Rice Thresher. Written by a pair disputing the results of their championship intramural softball game, the article ended: “Someone call a proctologist, we’ve just been boofed,” as if they’d been screwed over in losing the match.

In the 2000s, boofing changed it up a little as people started placing drugs and alcohol up their butts, as it allows the substances to reach the bloodstream faster, apparently, than through the mouth. The practice, related to prisoners smuggling contraband in their anuses, got so big that in 2018 that The Daily Show with Trevor Noah did a segment on the phenomenon, also called butt chugging.

In fall 2018, boofing really hit the big time when it came up in a US Senate Judiciary Committee hearing to discuss a sexual assault allegation against Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh. Part of the purpose of the hearing was to assess his character during the time the allegation took place. Senators examined the content in Kavanaugh’s high school yearbook, in which “Have you boofed yet?” was written. Kavanaugh claimed that boofing referred to a different kind of butt stuff: flatulence.