Green’s Dictionary of Slang

1. (US, also bugger) a piece of nasal mucus.

1891		DN I 214: [A ball of muscus in the nose is] Called bugger in the South, the u sound like [u].
1908		L.W. Payne Jr ‘Word-List From East Alabama’ in DN III:iv 292: booger, n. A dried flake of mucus from the nose: used of children. ‘There’s a booger in your nose.’.
1915		L.R. Dingus ‘A Word-List From Virginia’ in DN IV:iii 181: bugger, n. [...] 3. Dried nasal mucus.
1970		E. Thompson Garden of Sand (1981) 181: He sometimes still ate buggers surreptitiously.
1974		(con. 1960s) R. Price Wanderers 76: Eeeeuwww! You got a booger on your shirt!
1980		E. Folb Runnin’ Down Some Lines 32: You so black dey make Bosco from your boogers.
1983		N. Heard House of Slammers 180: The prisoners who behind his back called him a bugger-eater.
1988		(con. 1930s) C.E. Lincoln The Avenue, Clayton City (1996) 7: I’ll [...] bumble out your nose like a booger!
1998		D. Hecht Skull Session 136: Thinking up jokes involving farts and boogers.
2002		J. Lerner You Got Nothing Coming 162: Like some hideous extraterrestrial spider, the green body of Scud’s booger is slowly detaching itself, one slick strand at a time, from the wall.
2003		Mad mag. July 6: Potrzebie [...] The stage a booger is in between being in the nostril and being in the mouth.
2016		T. Robinson Rough Trade [ebook] ‘I don’t know what’s on these hands’ [...] ‘I’m gonna guess ketchup and possibly a booger’.
2020		D. Winslow ‘Broken’ in Broken 38: ‘You would know what snot tastes like, you booger-eating little prick’.

2. (W.I.) in pl., trainers.

1978

‘Jamaica Child’ in Ashton et al. Our Lives (1982) 22: I used to dress up in short khaki trousers, with a shirt to match. I had my pair of boogers on and was ready for school.