The proper spelling of the Newfoundland slang “B’y”
July 30th, 2009
There was some debate todate as to the proper spelling of the word b’y. Any good geek will look up the real answer to any debate so here I am.
The Dictionary of Newfoundland and Labrador spells it “b’y.”
b’y {pronounced: BY} ~ 1. a young male person, a boy. 2. any male person regardless of age. “Have another piece of the cake, my dear, the b’ys are working”
That’s what I always figured. That it’s boy, shortened (as much as a one syllable word can be shortened) so the “o” is replaced with an apostrophe.
Now as for “what are you at,” in Newfoundland slang form, I’m clueless. Any ideas?
@Darcy Fitzpatrick
My best guess is: Whadd’ya at?
That is what is listed under Newfoundland English Expressions on the Newfoundland English page of Wikipedia.
Yep! Remember well my Uncle Norm and Aunt Julie who practically raised me using the term “by” as “boy” when referring to a “man”. The greeting was always . . . “eh by . . whaddya at taday” They were originally from Harbor Grace, Norm was a veteran of the Newfoundland Regiment and served in WWI seeing serious action in France, Gawd, I loved those people and still miss them to this day.
Ahh, I always thought it was a contraction of the word ‘buddy’.
@Greg Pike
And ‘Whaddaya at’ or ‘whaddayat’ are acceptable forms. However, a lot of our slang is for speech only, we don’t write like that. Hence, you just have to sound it out and spell it as best you can!