What does buggery mean?
Buggery is a noun denoting anal intercourse, most commonly between men, and in its historical legal sense also covering bestiality. The term originated in medieval Europe, when the name of the Bulgarians — adherents of a Christian sect viewed as heretical — became attached in French and English to accusations of sexual deviance, giving rise to the related word 'bugger'. For centuries, buggery was treated as a serious crime: England's Buggery Act of 1533 made it a felony punishable by death, and similar statutes persisted across much of the English-speaking world until the twentieth century. Today the word survives chiefly in legal-historical writing and in British slang, where its derivatives have taken on broader, often non-sexual meanings. Because of its crude connotations and legal baggage, it is rarely used in polite neutral prose, where terms like 'anal intercourse' are preferred.
nounA formal or legal term for anal intercourse between men, historically also applied to bestiality; in law it denotes the act criminalised under older 'crimes against nature' statutes.
- Anal intercourse between men, especially as defined in historical or legal contexts.
- (Historical/legal) Bestiality, grouped with anal intercourse under the same capital offence in older statutes.
"Under the old statute, he was convicted of buggery and sentenced to a term of hard labour."
"The 1533 Act made buggery a felony punishable by death in England."
"In court records from the period, charges of buggery often appear alongside other moral offences."
Rarely pluralised, since the word usually functions as an uncountable mass noun referring to an act or category of offence.
"Historians catalogued dozens of prosecutions for buggeries recorded in the parish archives."
The word traces back to a medieval slur — English speakers once believed the 'Bulgarians' were heretics who practised unnatural acts, and the accusation stuck to their name so firmly it gave us 'buggery' and 'bugger'.
Reviewed by Deb Chak, Editor. AI-assisted content curated by RJS Tech Solutions LLP.
Etymology of buggery
Buggery derives via Anglo-Norman French from the Old French 'bougre', meaning 'heretic', itself from Medieval Latin 'Bulgarus' ('Bulgarian'). Medieval Western Europeans associated the Bogomil Christians of Bulgaria with unorthodox and supposedly unnatural practices, and the ethnonym hardened into a term for sodomites. The English word appears by the late Middle Ages and was given statutory force in Henry VIII's Buggery Act of 1533. Its closest relative in modern English is 'bugger', which shares the same route through French.
Related word forms
How buggery is actually used
Now largely confined to legal history, formal legal language, and British slang registers; in everyday modern usage it sounds archaic or deliberately crude. In British informal speech, derived forms like 'buggered' carry meanings unrelated to the literal sense.
Easily confused with buggery
Though they rhyme and are sometimes confused in speech, burglary is the crime of breaking into a building to steal, while buggery refers to anal intercourse.