"boots on the ground"

[Dan Goncharoff]

When an entity changes its name, its abbreviation changes with it.

Didn't Victor Borge do the punctuation? I think of Oscar Levant as the
boozy concert pianist.

DanG

On Fri, Sep 26, 2014 at 12:01 PM, Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at yale.edu>
wrote:

> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
> -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at YALE.EDU>
> Subject:      Re: "boots on the ground"
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> On Sep 26, 2014, at 11:08 AM, Joel S. Berson wrote:
>
> > At 9/26/2014 09:55 AM, Jonathan Lighter wrote:
> >=20
> >> 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.
> >>=20
> >> 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.
> >=20
> > 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. =20
>
> LH
> >=20
> >=20
> >> =
> http://thelead.blogs.cnn.com/2014/09/24/roundtable-more-u-s-ground-troops-=
> likely/
> >>=20
> >> (Read the text for the three additional "boots on the ground.")
> >>=20
> >> 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.
> >>=20
> >> The service paper "Stars and Stripes" adds that "boots on the ground" =
> is
> >> "slang."   How would that be?
> >=20
> > Because it confused "slang" with "metaphor"?
> >=20
> > Joel
> >=20
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>
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