...that My Mum will yell out "Come back in here you little bugger - don't you know that there are names for people who don't know when to come in out of the rain!"
When you think of the literal meaning of the word, it is surprising that
bugger has become acceptable as a light hearted expletive or even a term of endearment. It is one of the few crude sexual words that doesn't need to be prissily asterisked in print unlike f*ck or c**t, or even, sometimes, w*nk.
However, it was also common in my childhood to hear the variant
beggar used as the term of endearment. "Come here you cheeky little
beggar." This was more likely to be used by older females, perhaps as a nod to the fact that bugger is "not a nice thing to say".
In Nottingham (midlands of England) another variant is
bogger. Many people seem to assume that this is just a local pronunciation of
bugger.
You might even hear "
Bogger me!" as an expression of surprise.
However, there is a tenable theory that
bogger was originally a person from the bog: the low flat area between the city and the rivers Trent and Leen that was known as the "broad marsh". Although it is now well drained, built up, and has not flooded for decades, the names
broad marsh and
the meadows are still used.
People living in the broad marsh when it was still boggy and at risk of flooding tended to be poor and poorly educated and calling someone a
bogger would therefore be an insult. However, the association with bog (if that was really ever the case) has long given way in popular perception to the similarity in sound to the word
bugger.
Edit Two examples found in this forum:
https://forums.forteana.org/index.p...-isolation-remote-locations.22210/post-544461
https://forums.forteana.org/index.php?threads/things-that-make-you-go-wtf.26340/post-1510607