Obs. or dial. Forms: 4–7 bugge, 6–8 bugg, 6– bug. [ME. bugge, possibly from Welsh bwg (= bug) ‘a ghost,’ quoted in Lhwyd’s Archæologia Brit. (1707), 214, from the MS. Welsh Vocabulary of Henry Salesbury (born 1561). Owen Pugh has bwg ‘hobgoblin, scarecrow’; but the word is apparently now known chiefly in its derivatives. When bug became current as the name of an insect (see BUG sb.2), this sense fell into disuse, and now survives only in the compound BUGBEAR. Cf. BOGY, BUGABOO.
Although Salesbury’s evidence takes the Welsh word back only to the latter half of the 16th c., before which there was plenty of time for its adoption from the Eng. bugge, bug, its Welsh nativity is strongly supported by a numerous family of derivatives, e.g., bwgan (= bu·gan) bughear, scarer, bwgwth to terrify, threaten, bwgwl (= bu·gul) terror, terrifying, threatening, whence bygylu to terrify, threaten, bygwydd hobgoblin, phantom. The S.Wales bwci (bu·ki) can however scarcely be a derivative, but looks like an adoption of ME. bugge, or modern bogy. With these Welsh words cf. Manx boag, boagáne ‘bugbear, bogle, sprite’ (whence boaganach frightful, boagandoo scarecrow), the Irish bocán hobgoblin, Gael. bochdan (? for bocan) hobgoblin (though these cannot be actually cognate with Welsh bwgan). Owen Pugh has also bygel nos ‘phantom,’ which seems however to be an error for bugail nos, in Breton buguel-nos ‘shepherd or lad of the night.’]
1. An object of terror, usually an imaginary one; a bugbear, hobgoblin, bogy; a scarecrow. To swear by no bugs: to take a genuine oath, not a mere pretence of one.
1388. Wyclif, Baruch vi. 69. As a bugge, either a man of raggis [1611 scarcrow] in a place where gourdis wexen.
c. 1440. Promp. Parv., 55. Bugge, or buglarde, maurus, ducius.
1529. More, Comfort agst. Trib., I. Wks. (1557), 1161/2. Lest there happe to be such black bugges in dede as folke call deuilles.
1535. Coverdale, Ps. xc[i]. 5. Thou shalt not nede to be afrayed for eny bugges by night.
1565. Jewel, Def. Apol. (1611), 285. A bug meet only to fray Children.
1579. Gosson, Sch. Abuse, 23. Caligula … bid his horse to supper … and swore by no bugs that hee would make him a Consul.
1593. Shaks., 3 Hen. VI., V. ii. 2. Warwicke was a Bugge that fear’d vs all.
1611. Speed, Hist. Gt. Brit., VII. xlii. 3. 349. Champions against the maried Clergy (for women in those dayes were great bugs in their eyes).
1681. Glanvill, Sadducismus, II. (1726), 453. Timerous Fools that are afraid of Buggs.
1719. D’Urfey, Pills (1872), II. 306. Let the bug Predestination Fright the Fools no better know.
b. ? A person of assumed importance. Possibly this may survive in the U.S. slang ‘a big bug’ for an aristocrat, ‘swell,’ though the latter is regarded by those who use it as referring to BUG sb.2
1771. Smollett, Humph. Cl. (1815), 255. That I’m nine times as good a man as he, or e’er a bug of his country.
1843. Haliburton, Sam Slick Eng., II. ix. 163 (Bartlett). We ’ll go to the Lord’s house … pick out the big bugs.
2. Comb., as bug-boy (? corruption of BUGABOO); bug-law, a law intended to inspire terror. Also BUGBEAR, BUG-WORD.
1601. Deacon & Walker, Spirits & Divels, 354. The countrey hath been free from such dangerous bug-boyes. Ibid. (1601), Ans. to Darel, 222. Hobgoblings, Bugboies, Night-sprites, or Fairies.
1694. R. L’Estrange, Fables, lxxi. (1714), 87. ’Tis much the same Case betwixt the People and Bugg-Laws … that it is here betwixt the Fox and the Lyon.
