Dear Bill: This is more of a question than a contribution. I would dearly love to find where the expression "I boneyize it" came from. I am from Nova Scotia and my husband grew up in British Columbia using that saying. I had never heard it before I met him and haven't been able to find anything in various dictionaries to explain the term. Any help would be appreciated.
Good question, Grace! Boneyize is a true Westcoast Canadianism which does appear in one of the current best reference works for slang. The New Partridge Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English, on page 225, states that boneyize means to lay claim to something. It is a Canadian kids' expression from the late 1940s meaning "first dibs." On the Canadian prairies, it has been reported to mean "covet." The root is probably "Boney," one of the playful nicknames in English for Napoleon Bonaparte, who claimed first dibs on most of Europe at one time or another. If any reader knows a more cogent origin of this verb, email it to me at canadiansayings@mountaincable.net
© 2008 William Gordon Casselman
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