6,078 articles
Body odour and sexual attraction
Body odour and sexual attraction: the MHC/HLA "sweaty T-shirt" mate-choice hypothesis, fertility scent cues, and human pheromone claims. Wedekind's 1995 study reported MHC-dissimilarity preferences, but 2020 meta-analyses find no overall effect.
Bogan
Bogan: Australian and New Zealand slang for an uncultured, boorish person, used of the white working-class poor; closest to British 'chav'. Origin unknown, spread from 1980s Melbourne, with variants cashed-up bogan and boganette.
Bohemian Club
The Bohemian Club is a private men-only San Francisco club founded in 1872 by journalists and artists, known for its 2,700-acre Bohemian Grove retreat in Sonoma County, the Cremation of Care ritual, and a membership of political and business elites.
Bohemianism
Bohemianism, from French la bohème (a term for the Romani), is the unconventional art-centered lifestyle of nineteenth-century Parisian artists defined by Henri Murger and opposed to bourgeois society, later spreading to Greenwich Village and becoming the commercialized boho chic.
Boi (slang)
Boi is an informal spelling of "boy" used as playful internet slang and as a queer identity term rooted in Black American vernacular and lesbian communities; also a Welsh greeting and the BOI finance acronym.
Bolivian hunger strikes of 1977–1978
The Bolivian hunger strikes of 1977–1978 began with four miners' wives in La Paz and grew to about 1,200 strikers, forcing dictator Hugo Banzer to grant amnesty.
Bolivian immigration to Argentina
Bolivian immigration to Argentina is a long-standing migration flow, historically seasonal harvest work in the northwest and now urban labor, with about 345,000 Bolivian-born residents at the 2010 census.
Bon Secours Mother and Baby Home
Bon Secours Mother and Baby Home, also St Mary's, Tuam, County Galway: Catholic-run institution for unmarried mothers, 1925–1961, where 796 children died and a septic-tank mass grave is being excavated since 2025.
Bona Mugabe
Bona Mugabe (Bona Chikore), only daughter of Robert and Grace Mugabe, is a Zimbabwean businesswoman appointed to the 2017 Censorship Board and 2026 EmpowerBank deputy chair; her 2023 divorce exposed alleged assets including 21 farms and a Dubai mansion.
Boneghazi
Boneghazi, or the stealing human bones controversy, was a December 2015 Tumblr scandal accusing New Orleans witch Ender Darling of taking cemetery bones for rituals; it spawned memes and a January 2016 police raid.
Bonham Carter family
The Bonham Carter family is an English political and Liberal family begun by MP John Bonham Carter, whose descendants include Violet Bonham Carter and actress Helena Bonham Carter.
Boomerang Generation
Boomerang generation: young adults who leave the family home and return to their parents, often for financial reasons. Also called boomerang kids; measured by rising coresidence rates in the US, OECD, UK, and Australia.
Bootblacking (BDSM)
Bootblacking, in leather and BDSM communities, is the ritual care, cleaning, and polishing of boots and leather gear, often as service submission; known for bar stands since the 1970s and contests like International Mr./Ms. Bootblack (split 1998) and International Community Bootblack (2003).
Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza
Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza is Gloria Anzaldúa's 1987 hybrid book of prose and poetry from Aunt Lute Books on the U.S.-Mexico border, Chicana feminism, code-switching, and mestiza consciousness; issued in five editions plus a 2021 critical edition.
Boredom
Boredom is an aversive emotional state of wanting but being unable to engage in satisfying activities, distinct from apathy, anhedonia, and depression; tied to attention and meaning, measured by scales such as the Boredom Proneness Scale, and linked to depression, anger, and risk behaviors.
Borjigin (Боржигин)
Borjigin (Боржигин) is the royal Mongol clan of Genghis Khan, also called the Golden Clan, ancestor-name Borjigidai; it ruled the Mongol Empire and Yuan dynasty, and remains Mongolia's most chosen surname.
Borley Rectory
Borley Rectory, a Victorian Essex rectory built in 1863 and burned in 1939, was called England's most haunted house through Harry Price's investigations and the disputed 1956 SPR report.
Boro people
The Boro people, also referred to as Bodo or Kachari, are an ethnic community of Northeast India and the Brahmaputra valley, speaking the Tibeto-Burman language.
Bororo
Bororo (Boe): indigenous people of Mato Grosso, Brazil, speaking a Macro-Jê language; matrilineal, eight clans, circular villages around a men's house; studied by Lévi-Strauss.
Bosniaks (Бошњаци)
Bosniaks (Bošnjaci, Бошњаци), the South Slavic Muslim nation of Bosnia and Herzegovina; official name under the 1995 Dayton Accord, formerly called Bosnian Muslims; speak Bosnian.
Bosnians
Bosnians are the inhabitants of Bosnia and Herzegovina; the civic term Bosnian (Bosanac) differs from Bosniak (Bošnjak), the Muslim ethnic group, alongside Bosnian Serbs and Croats, censuses, and post-Dayton politics.
Boston Brahmin
Boston Brahmin, or First Families of Boston, describes Boston's traditional upper class, descendants of Puritan merchant families like the Adamses, Cabots, and Lowells, named by Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. in 1860.
Boston marriage
Boston marriage: a late 19th- to early 20th-century New England term for a long-term cohabiting relationship between two unmarried, often college-educated and financially independent women; popularized by Henry James's The Bostonians (1886), exemplified by Annie Fields and Sarah Orne Jewett.
Boston Naming Test
The Boston Naming Test is a neuropsychological assessment in which a person names 60 line drawings of common objects, measuring word retrieval in dementia and other conditions.
Bourgeoisie
Bourgeoisie: originally medieval town dwellers (bourg, from Latin burgensis, 1007), later the European middle class; in Marxist theory the capitalist owners of the means of production, opposed to the proletariat.
Bouvier family
Bouvier family: the American family founded by Michel Bouvier of Pont-Saint-Esprit, Philadelphia cabinetmaker turned real-estate tycoon; best known through Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy Onassis and the 1953 Kennedy marriage.
Bowing
Bowing (ojigi, お辞儀) is a noncontact greeting gesture of inclining the head or bending the trunk, standard in Japan with graded angles (eshaku 15°, keirei 45°, saikeirei ~90°), used for greeting, thanks, and apology, with roots in Chinese ritual and distinct East Asian variants like namaste and wai.
Bowling Alone
Bowling Alone is Robert D. Putnam's 1995 Journal of Democracy article and 2000 Simon & Schuster book arguing that American civic engagement and social capital declined sharply after the 1960s, mainly through generational succession.
Boy
Boy: a male child; boyhood as a biological and social stage. Covers word history, developmental vulnerability, nurture gaps, education outcomes, masculinity norms, manosphere influence, and care research.
Boycott
Boycott: collective refusal to buy from, work for, or deal with a target to force change, named after Captain Charles Boycott, ostracized in Ireland in 1880; a core nonviolent-resistance tactic.