Boop

About

Boop is an ideophone which is most commonly used to describe the action of touching something on the nose or head in a cute manner. The word is often employed textually as a onomatopoeia. Boop is favored as a caption for animals pictures as well as images in the My Little Pony fandom.

Origin

Though the exact origin of the word is unknown, examples of the sound effect can be found in early '90s media. In the 1992 Simpsons episode "Lisa's First Word",^[1] the sound effect can be heard at the end of the episode, when Bart places a postage stamp on baby Lisa's nose in an attempt to mail her away.

A similar sound effect can be heard in the 1999 film Dogma in a scene where Bethany (Linda Fiorentino) asks God (Alanis Morrisette) "Why are we here?"; God responds by touching Bethany's nose while saying "Bwerp!"

Spread

The earliest definition of the word boop was submitted to Urban Dictionary on April 12, 2003.^[2] The phrase did not receive image macro form until late 2010 when Flickr user Doug Mahugh uploaded his image "Love Tap" to the site.^[3] The image was then posted to Facebook where the comment "You booped him!" was left.^[4] The comment and the image were then converted to macro form.

The subreddit /r/boop was created September 9th, 2009, and has over 33,600 subscribers as of October 2015.^[5] The social news company Buzzfeed has also created many posts featuring "boop animals" since 2012.^[6] DeviantArt also features a wide selection of creations tagged "boop" in their gallery.^[7]

Various Examples

Variations of images have been made which either featured a head boop or an nose boop. The phrase "Imma boop your (head/nose)." is often used as a snowclone as well.

Search Interest

The term boop is often searched for in relation to the fictional character "Betty Boop". Search interest has been modified to reflect usage in accordance to the meme.

External References