英语词汇boss的起源、历史背景-英语词源词典

boss. Early Americans, independent and democratic, never liked the word “master” with all its aristocratic associations. Late in the 18th century they adopted the Dutch word baas meaning the same thing, and were soon spelling it boss. By as early as 1838 boss had achieved common usage and writers as prominent as James Fenimore Cooper were condemning it as a barbaric vulgarization of the language. Some people think that boss as an adjective meaning the best, the greatest, is recent teenage slang, but the word has been used in the same sense since the mid-19th century. The usage of baas (boss) as a form of address from a black to a white man is dead in Namibia, where it has been banned by law, and it is fast dying in South Africa.

词汇	boss
词源	boss. Early Americans, independent and democratic, never liked the word “master” with all its aristocratic associations. Late in the 18th century they adopted the Dutch word baas meaning the same thing, and were soon spelling it boss. By as early as 1838 boss had achieved common usage and writers as prominent as James Fenimore Cooper were condemning it as a barbaric vulgarization of the language. Some people think that boss as an adjective meaning the best, the greatest, is recent teenage slang, but the word has been used in the same sense since the mid-19th century. The usage of baas (boss) as a form of address from a black to a white man is dead in Namibia, where it has been banned by law, and it is fast dying in South Africa.
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