MWW 5: боов

Cyrillic	боов
Transcription	boov
IPA	[pɔ:w]
Layman’s Pronunciation	BAWV
Translation	fried pastry

Боов is a very characteristic part of the Mongolian diet which you can find in any tiny little store, or which is made at home. In fact, it’s one of the few things that I can always find at the store (unlike eggs or baking soda). In its standard form it’s simply a piece of dough, fried. But it gets applied to all sorts of things which we might call cookies, or donuts, or might not have a word for.

This is your typical home-made боов, which will be offered to you if you visit a Mongolian house or гэр.

This thing was almost as long as my forearm. It is known as улын боов. It was hard, and had a sort of greasy, cheesy taste. People make pyramids of this stuff for weddings. I found some examples of this here and here.

This is a еэвэн нарийн боов made by Stimo. It's basically a shortbread cookie. I buy a bag of these a week and eat them for breakfast because I'm too tired and cold to do anything other than start a fire, which usually takes most of the time I allot between waking up and going to work.

I don't know what the special name for this is, but the school kitchen bakes them and they're really good. They're made with risen dough and are soft and chewy inside, and taste pretty much like a donut without glaze. Whenever the school bakes them, I take some. Cats also go crazy for them.

Боов is also known as боорцог (boortsog). It’s convenient that there is another word for it, because боов has another meaning. Whether by coincidence or metaphorical extension, боов is also a slang term for the most conspicuous part of the male anatomy.

So when I walked into the teacher’s lounge one day and saw the улын боов above for the first time, I exclaimed,

Whoa, маш том боов!

(Whoa, mash tom boov!)

which could mean either, “Whoa, really big fried pastry” or “Whoa, really big penis.” You can imagine what the reaction of the faculty was.