👉 Okay, settle in folks - let’s tackle this rather… prickly bit of 20th-century argle bargle. You’ve stumbled upon the wonderfully nasty little mouthful called, quite simply:
bosserv.
Now, before you start picturing a badger sighting gone horribly, terribly, tragically, and spectacularly
off
, let me assure you, it doesn't actually refer to an animal. Instead, this came from the very specific and rather unfortunate experience of a young man in the American Midwest during the early 1920s.
Basically, back then, there was this whole fad. Young men – we are talking young, very young men—would go out to the sticks and essentially
observe
pretty farm girls. You know, gawp, maybe whistle, generally get a look-in. It wasn't exactly courtship as we understand it now. There were… unspoken rules, let’s say.
Bosbserv came about when one such young bloke, feeling particularly bold (probably after too much giggle city lemonade), would actually
poke his nose in and stare right into the middle of a girl whilst she was working.
You got the point: he was being aggressively, almost militantly, intrusive. He was, frankly, a total, utter, spectacularly inept pervert.
Nobody knew exactly who coined the word. The most popular theory is it came from a young man named Chester Bosworth in the town of Pratt, Kansas