When you start wondering where a figure of speech came from, you sometimes find yourself on dark literary backroads, if not actually in BF Egypt.
It was during a search for the town of Waldo, New Mexico that my husband described our extremely rural surroundings as “BF Egypt.” And such is the nature of our car conversations on these occasions, I was shortly whipping out my iPhone in an effort to discover just why “B*** F*** Egypt” (to use the full (more or less) expression) should be a common idiom for the backside of beyond.
It was an entertaining search, during which we discovered that all kinds of cultures have an idiom that pretty much means, “Out in the sticks,” if not absolutely, “Farther away than nowhere.” The British do not use “BF Egypt,” which seemed odd in light of their expeditionary and exploratory history in the desert regions. Still, they do seem aware of their adventurous heritage: current British idiom is “in the bundu”—“bundu” being an African word (specific ethnicity unknown) meaning…well, BF Egypt.
Here (courtesy of Wikipedia and its many contributors) is a partial list of popular idioms meaning “a very remote (not to say culturally backward and/or with inhabitants given to deviant sexual practices) place”:
• Anytown, USA and Dullsville in the USA.
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• Auchterturra in Scotland, and Glenboggin, which has its own official website.[30]
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• Back o’ Bourke in Australia (unspecified remote place). Bourke, New South Wales was the terminus of the railway line from Sydney, thus the start of the real Outback.
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• Bally-Go-Backwards in Ireland (unspecified remote small country town).
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• Black Stump or also Albuquerque in Australia and New Zealand (“beyond the black stump” indicates an extremely remote location).
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• Up the Boohai (approximately “boo-eye”) in New Zealand, occasionally given as, Up the Boohai hunting pukeko with a long handled shovel. The Boohai is a fictitious river. It is used to indicate that the answerer does not wish to respond to any question involving “where?”. Up the Boohai can also indicate that plans are apparently ruined or an item is extremely non-functional.
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• The Boondocks (or the Boonies).
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• BFE or Bumblefuck, Egypt (also Bumfuck, Egypt, Butt Fuck, Egypt, or Beyond Fucking Egypt) refers to an unspecified remote location or destination, assumed to be arduous to travel to, unpleasant to visit and/or far away from anything of interest to the speaker (e.g. “Man, you parked way the hell out in BFE”). In Southeastern Pennsylvania and New Jersey, this is often referred to as Japip or East Jabip/Jabib. In the Chicago metropolitan area, the term was coined to refer to the region in downstate Illinois known as “Little Egypt”, centered in Cairo, Illinois, for being the furthest from the urban center in both distance and way of life. Bumfuck is also military slang for a remote, hard to get to military base. Has been also rendered as Bumfuck, Iowa or Bumfuck, Wyoming or Bumfuck, Idaho. Bumblefuck, Missouri was popularized by the 1988 movie Rain Man.
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• Buttcrack or Upper Buttcrack (usually a New England state).
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• Crackerland and Jerkwater (from the 1982 film First Blood, small hometowns of typical US Army recruits).
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• East Cupcake.
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• East Jahunga.
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• East Jesus.
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• Four-Fifths of Fuck-All.
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• Dog River, Armpit, or Moose Fuck in Canada.
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• Hay and Hell and Booligal, an Australian colloquialism for anyplace hot and uncomfortable; made famous by Banjo Patterson’s humorous poem of that title. (Hay and Booligal are actual New South Wales communities in the Riverina.)
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• Hickville is used to describe a small farming town. (Hick comes from hillbilly.)
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• Loamshire for a rural county in England (and the Loamshires for a regiment based in that county).
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• Outer Mongolia used to represent a far and distant land relatively unknown to the average person; also rendered as the imaginary country of Outer Congolia
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• Peoria refers to provincial mainstream cities or towns in the US; typically used in expressions like “Will it play in Peoria?”
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• Podunk in the USA.
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• Sainte-Clotilde-de-Rubber-Boot in Quebec, Canada.
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• The Sticks refers to a remote rural location (US + UK)
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• Timbuktu is often used to refer to an unspecified but remote place.
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• Tipperary can still be used to denote anywhere that is “a long way from home”.
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• Tweebuffelsmeteenskootmorsdoodgeskietfontein used to refer to a typical South African small rural town.
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• Ultima Thule can mean “beyond the borders of the known world” or a far-north island.
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• Upper Rubber Boot in Ontario, Canada.
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• Woop Woop, Upper Woop Woop, Oodnawoopwoop, or Wopwops in Australia and New Zealand (often “out Woop Woop” as in, “they live out Woop Woop somewhere”, and used when referring to people who live in a country area unfamiliar to the speaker).
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• Waikikamukau (pronounced “Why kick a moo-cow”) in New Zealand.
Oh, Waldo, New Mexico? It’s way the heck out in BF Egypt. [g]*
*Actually, Waldo is even farther away than that. One of New Mexico’s small ghost-towns, the entire place was bought up by a salvager in the 1950’s and completely carted away. Nothin’ much left.
[This photo from www.ghosttowns.com, which has the complete story of Waldo.]
Diana
You found all this info with your iPhone? Seriously, you’re truly a font of information. Your researching skills are well known and you’ve just demonstrated them again!
Jerry
When I was growing up in Philadelphia we said “Back of beyond”.
I was really glad to see “East Cupcake” in there, true to my New England upbringing, but you missed one: I lived in northern California for awhile, and EBF is referred to as “in the Tullies”. I didn’t realize until many years later that this is a corruption of “Ultima Thule”.
When my Oregonian cousins would refer to someplace as being” out in the tules”, my response was “What is a tule?”
Tules (“tullies” ) are bulrushes. Northern Cali and parts of Oregon have lakes, ponds, swamps, etc. full of the things , and they are indeed, back of beyond. (But not as far as Ultima Thule, sorry.)
Diana,
Just came across this and must add my own. I live in a rural area of South Carolina. I have dubbed it the “CornBurbs” since I live about 7 or 8 miles from the nearest Corncob town. When I was growing up, I used to call the country “Stickville”, but I think I like “Cornburbs” better. I can at least halfway pretend I’m still urban.
Wow! *laughing*
We always said “boonies/boondocks” when I was growing up in NJ. I hadn’t heard BF Egypt until you started talking about it recently.
(The things you learn, hanging around here…. *g*)
Karen
We’ve always used West Armpit to refer to such places.
We Kiwis seem to be well represented in this list – I guess we have a lot of remote areas! I personally use ‘out in the wops’ a lot.
Yes we have the OB ‘s around here too.. outbacks
I hadn’t heard the expression BF Egypt before and I’m an army brat! Such an education. We have been near Waldo and it is indeed in the back of beyond! Lots of places like that in New Mexico.
Another term about some small Alberta, Canada towns, is “don’t blink, you’ll miss it”. *G*
Thanks for the laugh and the ed-ju-ma-ka-tion.
Vicki
Here in Michigan, I’ve heard BFE since my teen years. We also lived a mile from a road named Podunk. Having grown up in rural Ohio, we thought Michigan WAS Podunk when we encountered miles and miles of dirt roads! The roads in Ohio might have been narrow, but they all had pavement! Now, my family lives on a dirt road, and I LOVE living in the “sticks”!
When my husband and I moved out to the country his brother-in-law referred to our new location as “you now live in BFE”. My husband responded, ” Why, you are absolutely correct…we now live on the Bechtel Family Estate”.
HA!
Oh, we say “Bum Fuck ____” here in Canada, at least I’ve heard people (my sister) in Ontario use that one regularly. Or we say “out in the boonies” but I’ve never heard the two for Ontario and Quebec you referenced above.
Pam
Oh, Diana! Thank you, thank you, thank you for the gifts of laughter!!! I read only 1/3 of BFE, saving the rest for later laughs. My own personal fave is Ballarat, a hole in the road on the way to Lake Tahoe … that one’s always good for an hour of chucks! My goodness … you are SUCH an education!
LOL fantastic post!! This is exactly the kind of stuff that Husband o’ mine and I get into! I think my favorite at the moment is ‘four-fifths of fuck-all’ LOL! I must share this with my young adult kiddos!
Thanks for the entertaining education! I’m very familiar with BFE, but I can’t help wondering why you bothered with the asterisks at the beginning!
I have another one: “the corner of No and Where,” or approximately where my brother lives, on the Indiana prairie.
Thank you for the enlightening laugh. I’ve never heard of 99% of the expressions, include BF Egypt. My favorite was coined by my son: a hole in the middle of nowhere (where I “left” him for 3 weeks one summer).
Dear Mistress Diana,
We use “Out in the Pickers”.
BFE was always a favorite…thanks for sharing. “To Hell and Gone” is a family phrase…not sure why.
Will send a few german BF Egypts:
Kleinpieselbach (sorry – unable to translate – maybe Small-Pissing-Creek)
Adewe (Aka Arsch-der-Welt – Ass of the world)
Nirgendwo (deep in the middle of no-way…)
Here’s another German one:
JWD (pronounced roughly yott-vee-dee) – an abbreviation of “janz weit draußen” in Berlin-dialect, meaning far out of everywhere
I have had my suburb referred to as “chicken-dale” because it is so far removed from downtown Memphis. BFE I have heard all my life – maybe because Memphis, Tennessee is named after Memphis, Egypt??
There’s also “Bumfart”, sometimes more precisely “East Bumfart”.
And, down South anyway, for a town of no significance, “a wide place in the road”.
Well, my parents used to say ‘Yachupitz’ (sp?) – sounded better than using the English terminology..
I grew up in Albuquerque and communted daily to Santa Fe. The highway signs and the exit ramp to Waldo are beautiful. I think the Ghost Town researchers must have gotten that photo of the doorway before I got there, I did even see that.
Did this location have anything to do with the books “Where’s Waldo”?