Boggard

noun

noun ·Uncommon ·Advanced level

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    A bogey: a ghost, goblin, or other hostile supernatural creature, especially a small local spirit haunting gloomy places or the scenes of violence. UK, dialectal

    "A Boggarde, spectrum."

  2. 2
    An outhouse: an outbuilding used as a lavatory. obsolete

    "Siege, jacques, bogard, or draught, latrina."

  3. 3
    A bugbear: any terrifying thing. figuratively

    "Nor be such buggarddes to the poor, yff they may not beare the bagge alone."

  4. 4
    Any real or imagined thing which prompts a horse to boggle (take fright). obsolete

Synonyms

All synonyms
boghouseboghousebugcommonsdemonforeign

Example

More examples

"He thinks every bush a boggard, i.e. a bugbear or phantasm."

Etymology

Etymology 1

Uncertain, but likely from Lancashire, Yorkshire etc dialectal variants of bug (“goblin; terrifying thing; etc.”), equivalent to bog + -ard.

Etymology 2

From bog (“latrine; outhouse”) + -ard.

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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.