Boondocks

[Wilson Gray]

"Shortened," you say? Well, I'm glad to have that straightened out.
I'd long had the false intuition that "boondockers" was the result of
an extension of "boondocks" to the type of footwear worn in such
areas, e.g. as at Camp Lejeune, SC. I've never made any connection
between "boondocks" the footwear and "boondockers" the footwear. I
know the latter form only as a literary term that I learned long after
"boondocks," which was used only in Saint Louis, AFAIK, had gone into
the dead file.

The Marine Corps is the most, ah, conservative branch of the most
conservative armed force. So, there isn't any Corps jargon or slang in
BE that I know of. I've come across only three black marines in my
life and no white ones at all. But, back in the day, everybody that I
knew had some connection with The War.

-Wilson

On Sun, Mar 2, 2008 at 3:26 PM, Jonathan Lighter <wuxxmupp2000 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
>  Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
>  Poster:       Jonathan Lighter <wuxxmupp2000 at YAHOO.COM>
>  Subject:      Re: Boondocks
>  -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>  As HDAS generously indicates, "boondockers" was the Marine Corps name for their rugged "field shoes" of WWII and later.  The word was soon more widely applied.
>
>   Though Google Books finds a few exx. back to the 1980s (only), the shortening to "boondocks" is a novelty to the editor.
>
>   JL
>
>  Wilson Gray <hwgray at GMAIL.COM> wrote:
>   ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
>  Sender: American Dialect Society
>  Poster: Wilson Gray
>  Subject: Boondocks
>  -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>  In my youth, in BE, "boondocks" was the slang term for combat boots or
>  for (work)boots that resembled them. The equivalent of standard "out
>  in the boondocks" was "out in the country" or "out in the woods." The
>  latter term tended to be rather literal. When I was a child, my father
>  took me with him on a trip to see someone who lived out in the woods.
>  The man and his family lived in a log cabin in a clearing literally
>  out in the East-Texas piney woods, at the end of a dirt "trace" or
>  track. It was there that I first saw swine in my, at that time, very
>  short life. I remember them as running loose around his cabin, but
>  they were most likely in a pen. IAC, those weird snouts freaked me out
>  so much that I was afraid to get out of the car.
>
>  Since those days, however, I have often had occasion to enjoy swine
>  snouts in the form of barbecued snoots, a Saint Louis speciality, but
>  they're also easily available in South-Central Los Angeles.
>
>  And, also since then, I've heard and read stories of people falling or
>  being thrown into pig pens and being eaten alive. They make me glad
>  that I didn't get out of the car.
>
>  -Wilson
>  --
>  All say, "How hard it is that we have to die"---a strange complaint to
>  come from the mouths of people who have had to live.
>  -----
>  -Sam'l Clemens
>
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--
All say, "How hard it is that we have to die"---a strange complaint to
come from the mouths of people who have had to live.
-----
                                              -Sam'l Clemens

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The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org