"boots on the ground"

[Laurence Horn]

On Sep 26, 2014, at 11:08 AM, Joel S. Berson wrote:

> At 9/26/2014 09:55 AM, Jonathan Lighter wrote:
> 
>> If I hear this phrase again I'm going to scream. In fact, I might as well
>> do it now and get it over with.
>> 
>> Ah, back to normal. Jake Tapper and his guests managed to say "boots on the
>> ground" *eight* times in less than two minutes, which averages out to one
>> boot roughly every seven seconds.
> 
> Proves that the U.S. is heading for a massive re-engagement.

Maybe we should just airlift a massive bunch of boots and drop them on ISIS forces.  Speaking of which, does anyone have a take on why the U.S. government (and maybe U.K., I can't remember) insists on referring to our enemy as ISIL when everyone else calls them ISIS?  Whenever someone explains that ISIL is for "the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant", I keep thinking of Oscar Levant and his spoken punctuation marks.  

LH
> 
> 
>> http://thelead.blogs.cnn.com/2014/09/24/roundtable-more-u-s-ground-troops-likely/
>> 
>> (Read the text for the three additional "boots on the ground.")
>> 
>> Plus. OED actually wants to link the "boot" in "boots on the ground" with
>> def. 1d, namely "A recruit at a boot camp."  So what these people  are
>> "really" talking about, I mean etymologically, is "untrained recruits on
>> the ground."   Make sense? It does to somebody.
>> 
>> The service paper "Stars and Stripes" adds that "boots on the ground" is
>> "slang."   How would that be?
> 
> Because it confused "slang" with "metaphor"?
> 
> Joel
> 
> ------------------------------------------------------------
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The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org