dune buggy, buggies, 1940s??

Sun Oct 11 17:44:54 UTC 2009

Odd that Google Books produces snippet views for *neither* of these supposed
exx., even though the one from _Tracks_ (perh. from 1945) surfaces on the
search page.

That makes me even more suspicious. Otherwise, aside from Bond, we still
don't have even an allegation of any kind of "dune buggy" from before the
mid-to-late 1950s.  NewspaperArchive turns up nothing.

Bond (or the person standing next to him) certainly could have invented the
word "dune buggy" in 1942 independently of any later developments, but it
strains my credulity.  Why not just say "buggy" or, if feeling
creative, "desert buggy"?  My suspicion is that, unless the entire passage
is a later interpolation (unlikely), Bond did originally write "buggy" and
added "dune" decades later to make it a little more specific.  He may not
have known what the British called the vehicle.

"Sleeping Bear Dunes" are in Michigan. The fact that "dune" is in the name
itself would suggest "dune buggy" for a related special vehicle, if the word
really was in use there as early as 1945.

Bond seems not to use the word "dune" elsewhere in the book, which suggests
that it wasn't in the forefront of his mind at the time. Sure, maybe it was
anyway, but the drift of *all* these unrealized possibilities, with the
exception of "small, two-wheeled buggies," is uniformly negative.
Coincidence?  I doubt it.

Regardless of what Bond may have written in 1942, the larger issue remains -
that people edit their letters and diaries for publication and sometimes
innocently modernize the language.

Am highly suspicious of extra-early "debuts" in less unertain contexts.

JL

On Sun, Oct 11, 2009 at 9:36 AM, Stephen Goranson <goranson at duke.edu> wrote:

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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Stephen Goranson <goranson at DUKE.EDU>
> Subject:      dune buggy, buggies, 1940s??
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> 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
>
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