Kenneth G. Wilson (1923–). The Columbia Guide to Standard American English. 1993.
bug (n., v.)
has a variety of senses. The noun means “an insect,” especially pests (in Britain, specifically “a bedbug”), and the term is Standard but usually nontechnical. Another sense, which is Conversational and Informal, means “a bacterium or other unspecified causer of disease, a microscopic organism, or, loosely, the disease itself” (related to that use is the slang use meaning “some general flaw in any system”: There’s some sort of bug in this computer program; we’ll have to debug it). There are also the slang meanings “a hidden microphone, used for surveillance and eavesdropping,” “an enthusiast, especially a hobbyist,” “a very small car, specifically one of the post-World-War-II Volkswagens,” and “the apprentice jockey’s weight allowance for the first year,” apparently so called because of the asterisk (which looks vaguely like an insect) next to the jockey’s name in the racing program. As a verb, bug is slang in these senses: “to install or use a hidden microphone,” “to annoy, bother, or irritate someone,” “to pop the eyes open wide, to make them protrude” (this sense often combines with out), presumably like some insects’ goggle eyes, and two combined idiomatic forms, bug off, meaning “go away,” as in Bug off and leave me alone! and bug out, meaning “to run away,” as in I was afraid, so I bugged out and went home. One other use of the noun is sometimes labeled obsolete but is only archaic slang, meaning “bugbear, monster, or simply someone important and powerful”: Her father is a really big bug in the banking business. Compare BOGEY.
