www.alphadictionary.com

...or maybe just "bug out." When I read way back then that Ronald Reagan had said in a press conference that "we are not bugging out," I thought, "Wow, Reagan's that up to date?" Because, to me, "bugging out" meant acting bugged, or crazy. Only then in that article did I see for the first time the sense of leaving with little or no advance warning.

But I guess bug is one of those little words too big to wrap one post around -- as a noun a bug can be a little creature, something that irritates you, an "undocumented feature" in computer software, a Volkswagen Beetle (or similar car), or, for that matter, a Beatle -- if you're of a certain age you might remember the phrase, "I hate bug music!" Plus I'm sure there are other meanings I've left out...

Don't bug me man! Or I'm going to bug out of here.

Aah, bug off! Or as Burns said to the louse on a lady's bonnet:

"Ye ugly, creepin, blastit wonner,
Detested, shunned by saunt an' sinner,
How daur ye set your fit upon her,
Sae fine a lady!
Gae somewhere else and seek your dinner,
On some poor body."

Nobody has mentioned the computer bug.

Tomorrow, September 9, was the day in 1947 that a moth was found squashed between the terminals of a relay in the Mark II computer at Harvard. Grace Murray Hopper immortalized the creature by taping it to a page in the event log, and referring to it as a "bug". This has been with us ever since (and I admit to being too familiar with them, in both hardware and software). I believe the logbook now resides at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, California. (When there was a Computer Museum in Boston, it lived there, and that's where I first saw the little mashed corpse.)

A "bug" is also what a ham radio operator would use to send Morse code over the ether.

And further, if one wants to instigate something through someone else's action, putting "a bug in one's ear" is a time-honored way to do it.

I am put in mind of a passage in the novel, How Green was my Valley. The hero was being lured into the lair of a prostitute. He noticed that her fingernails looked like they were covered with red bug juice. At least I think that is what I read. I was a teenager then and have never had the heart to revisit this dreary novel.

Ah, bug juice! Memories of Girl Scout camps past. And always red. But not the kind that might be used to color fingernails. More like the kind used by Jim Jones to camouflage cyanide -- but not at Girl Scout camp!

bbeeton: Are you referring to Trombidiidae, AKA red velvet mites,
AKA velvet bugs? I loved to see them come out after a rain when I was a child.

Philip Hudson -- No, "bug juice" to camping Girl Scouts is red Kool Aid, preferably cherry. And it didn't contain anything harmful (unless one considers sugar harmful). It's probably no longer a custom.

Are the mites you mention the ones that happily live in Spanish moss? I think not, after trying to look them up. I learned, regarding the Spanish moss variety, that if you intend to use the moss as part of a Hallowe'en costume, you should nuke it first to "discourage" the mites from taking up residence in *your* hair.

Although velvet bugs are actually mites they are about .25" in diameter and are totally harmless. But don't eat them, they taste horrible. I have never sampled one myself. I am sure your Girl Scout days as member and leader were memorable. As a boy, I lived so deep in the hinterland that there were no Boy Scouts to be found.