booger

American  

[boog-er] / ˈbʊg ər /

noun

• boogers
  plural

1. Informal. any person or thing.

   That shark was a mean-looking booger. Paddle the little booger and send him home.

2. Slang. a piece of dried mucus in or from the nose.

3. bogeyman.

4. Chiefly South Midland and Southern U.S. any ghost, hobgoblin, or other frightening apparition.

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Other Word Forms

Noun Inflected Forms

• boogers
  plural

Etymology

Origin of booger

1865–70; perhaps variant of British dialect boggard goblin, bogy; in senses of booger defs. 1, 2 conflated with bugger ¹

Example Sentences

See Examples For:

booger boogers

She opened Josh’s pomade and blew a snot booger into it.

From Los Angeles Times ● Apr. 17, 2026

“It’s worse than the grossest booger you’ve ever seen,” Dr. Choy said.

From New York Times ● Apr. 3, 2022

Cookie Monster: Me guess it not easy being color of booger.

From Washington Post ● Apr. 2, 2020

"In the studio, all together, sweaty, smelly, dusty, picking a booger, whatever, singing when it was my turn, that sort of thing for six, eight weeks. That's gruelling."

From BBC ● Sep. 6, 2019

He snorted like Daisy, our milk cow, when she had seen a booger.

From "Where the Red Fern Grows" by Wilson Rawls

Whether you eat your boogers or wipe them on things I end up touching, it is an indisputably unsanitary act and unacceptable in every culture on Earth.

From Seattle Times ● Jun. 23, 2023

But should we really be doing it — and what should we do with our boogers?

From Washington Post ● Aug. 20, 2022

“Let me just get your boogers out,” they might say, swab in hand.

From New York Times ● Feb. 19, 2021

But there are also jokes about boogers and farts.

From Los Angeles Times ● Jun. 28, 2018

He went over and got some 'toilet paper and wiped my tears and my boogers off his legs.

From "The Watsons Go to Birmingham" by Christopher Paul Curtis