"mountain boomer"

[Gregory {Greg} Downing]

At 11:06 AM 4/26/2001 -0400, jdespres at MERRIAM-WEBSTER.COM wrote:
>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.

A couple of comment: Is it prudent to dismiss DARE's un-hedged etymology, as
well as all the evidence accumulated by DARE in support of a seemingly
common if incorrect folk belief that certain mountain-dwelling animals were
responsible for the otherwise identified calls that mountain dwellers
sometimes heard, especially when that belief is apparently still well known
today? (Despite being scientifically disproven: one of the websites I
quickly checked yesterday claimed that we now know it is frogs that are
responsible for these vocalizations, though it is understandable enough that
19th-century mountain dwellers may well have felt it made sense to attribute
them to squirrels, who after all *do* vocalize.)

Isn't it likely that the term was originally used on the east coast, and
hence was applied to squirrels or chipmunks, and only subsequently was
reapplied further west to other creatures (the upland lizard in Oklahoma,
the upland beaver in the Pacific Northwest)? If so, the idea that the
*original* meaning of "mountain boomer" was a beaver thought to build booms
(clusters of floating logs) seems untenable. One would have to check the
source of the 1947 DARE cite (Cahalane, _Mammals_) to ascertain from context
which sense of "boom" is intended there. And even if Cahalane is atually
using the verb "booms" in the sense of making log structures, isn't it
possible that this is a Pacific Northwest folk-etymological reanalysis of
"boomer" as a result of the reapplication of this term from east-coast
upland squirrels to west-coast upland beavers? Squirrels don't build booms,
right?


>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.



Greg Downing, at greg.downing at nyu.edu or gd2 at nyu.edu