"mountain boomer"

jdespres at MERRIAM-WEBSTER.COM jdespres at MERRIAM-WEBSTER.COM
Thu Apr 26 15:06:36 UTC 2001


I doubt whether M-W has anything you don't have, Jesse, since our
etymology is consistent with those of DARE and the OED.  You've
probably seen the 1889 quotation in the Dictionary of American
English that claims "Booma . . . is a North Carolina term for the
little red squirrel . . . . Booma is the Indian name."  As far as I
know, nobody here has followed up on that suggestion.  Nor do we
have anything that would either strengthen or disprove the link
between the squirrel-term and the hillbilly-term.  If it began as a
humorous term of self-reference, as the quotations suggest, maybe
that link is plausible.  But those suggestions do come long after
the first attestation of the word, so they might very well be after-the-
fact and spurious, as your remarks suggest.

As for the "beaver-like animal" sense of "mountain boomer," we
have a quotation from Northwest Dialect Notes (Vol IV, Part I  -- no
date given, but the slip has an editorial stamp from 1928) that
claims "they make a peculiar noise, whence the name."  It's an
isolated instance of the explanation, though, and has nothing
convincing to back it up.  Here's another possibility:  perhaps
you've noticed the tentative association made in the 1947 quotation
given in DARE under "mountain beaver" between the animal's
"common name" and its reputation for sometimes cutting down
trees.  I would assume this hints at some sort of connection
between "boomer" and "boom" in the sense "an obstruction formed
of floating logs that retards the flow of a stream" (2 boom 4b in
MWID3).  The Dictionary of American English also hints at this
association by appending quotations for the log-related words
"boom-gatherer, boom-head," and "boom-house" to its 2 Boomer 2
entry ("the Rocky mountain beaver or sewellel.").  For what it's
worth, the mountain boomer is apparently notorious in the
Northwest for its tree-felling activities, as shown in this statement
by the Washington Forest Protective Association:  "[A] large
rodent, called a mountain boomer, seriously damages thousands of
acres of reforested lands every year by chewing on young trees.
One mountain boomer can easily kill hundreds of newly planted
trees within their home range of about three-quarter acre, leaving
large gaps in the forest."  But whether the animal then uses these
felled trees to build dams (or "booms") I'm not sure -- as the
definition in DARE indicates, it's a burrowing rodent, not a true
beaver.

About the lizard sense (which we don't enter), we have nothing you
wouldn't already have.

I'm afraid this amounts to very little, but there it is.

Joanne Despres
Merriam-Webster, Inc.



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