dune buggy, buggies, 1940s??

[Stephen Goranson]

Quoting Jonathan Lighter <wuxxmupp2000 at GMAIL.COM>:

> Dave is correct. I'm skeptical of the cites simply because these new
> exx.  sound "too good to be true."
>
> People who publish their diaries decades later have an annoying habit of
> doing minor verbal editing that can drive lexicographers crazy.
>
> This principle was suggested to me years ago in Charles R. Bond's _Flying
> Tiger's Diary_  (Texas A & M Press, 1984).  Bond writes (p. 211):
>
> "August. 12, 1942
> Was up at 4:30, had coffee by lantern light, rode to the field in an RAF
> 'dune buggy.'"
>
> AFAICT from Google Books "dune buggy" is a 1950s coinage, possibly sugg. by
> the syn. "beach buggy," making it slightly earlier than I had thought.
> "Dune buggies" became to national attention in the early '60s. (OED online
> has 1964, but Newspaper Archive turns them up from 1956 on. There is a
> "beach buggy" from 1935, but it's just an old taxi. A 1939 "beach
> buggy" is more like a toy.)
>
> Anyway, the chances are that Bond's "dune buggy" was a "Bren-gun carrier," a
> widely used vehicle more easily beheld than described:
>
>
http://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b3/A_Bren_Gun_Carrier_brings_in_a_batch_of_German_prisoners.jpg&imgrefurl=http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:A_Bren_Gun_Carrier_brings_in_a_batch_of_German_prisoners.jpg&h=661&w=696&sz=83&tbnid=CdbQA0FuIZS4LM:&tbnh=132&tbnw=139&prev=/images%3Fq%3D%2522bren%2Bgun%2Bcarrier%2522&hl=en&usg=__-g2kEMB_VgP7NXesSvfjd9F-Jfk=&ei=ZG7LSonVMKGutgflsaHpAQ&sa=X&oi=image_result&resnum=4&ct=image
>
> Of course I can't _prove_ that Bond didn't write "dune buggy" in 1942, but
> if he did he was a linguistic visionary of a high order. My tentative belief
> is that the "Murphy's Law" memoirists would fall into the same
> category.FWIW, I have never come across an ex. of "Murphy's Law" used even
> retroactively in any earlier memoir or first-person fiction about WWII.
> Surely such a handy, expressive term, had it been in use at all, should have
> spread widely and quickly.
>
>
> JL

Though it might be temerarious to suggest otherwise, I will note that on page
26, the same book has, supposedly from an October 20, 1941 letter:
The little "dog carts" [in Bali] are interesting. they are small, two-wheeled
buggies pulled by tiny ponies....

Maybe this author just liked to call sundry vehicles buggies. Maybe he
called the RAF vehicle by a name he made up, in quotation marks just like you
like 'em, not one used by the RAF.

And, though I can't confirm the google date of 1945, given twice, FWIW, right or
wrong:

Tracks - Page 14
1945
And at Sleeping Bear dune, Ford automobiles with over-sized balloon tires,
called dune buggies, are used for tours of the dune country. ...
Snippet view

Tracks: Chesapeake & Ohio, Nickel Plate, Pere Marquette?
by Chesapeake and Ohio Railway Company, New York, Chicago & St. Louis
Railroad,
Pere Marquette Railway - Crafts & Hobbies - 1945
Page 14 Item notes: v. 30, no. 8 - 1945 [for "dune buggies' search]

According to Worldcat this retitled serial was published 1944-?

SG

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