motorhuckle boots

Garson O'Toole adsgarsonotoole at GMAIL.COM
Sat Jan 8 07:48:52 UTC 2011


Jonathan Lighter's "Random House Historical Dictionary of American
Slang: H-O" has an entry for motorhuckle on page 599. The two cites he
gives are the two you mentioned:

motorhuckle n. motorcycle. Joc.
1983 S. King Christine 79: Get on your motorhuckle boots, boys.
1981-85 S. King It 340: All of them with their motorhuckle boots
cocked up on the seats in front of them.

Reviewing the top Google matches for "motorhuckle" reveals a large
number of spam-like websites with fragments of copied text. Many
matches are occurring in the sentences of King's novels that feature
the word "motorhuckle", and in word mishmashes. Google (Everything)
initially estimates "About 794 results" for "motorhuckle", but
repeatedly clicking on next exhausts the matches on "Page 11 of 104
results".

Problems with the "Google Ngram Viewer" have been discussed on the
list. For the primary search engine the problem of manipulators
constructing artificial websites with automated junk content may grow
over time.

On Sat, Jan 8, 2011 at 12:34 AM, Herb Stahlke <hfwstahlke at gmail.com> wrote:
> ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Herb Stahlke <hfwstahlke at GMAIL.COM>
> Subject:      motorhuckle boots
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Stephen King uses the term "motorhuckle boots" in his novels _It_ and
> _Christine_.  Google returns 438 raw hits including one with a picture
> of the boots.  But I haven't been able to find anything about the
> origin of the term.  OED doesn't include it, and I don't have access
> to DARE.
>
> Herb
>
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> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>

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