"boots on the ground"

[Jonathan Lighter]

Advisors (i.e., intended to train and advise) were "advisors."  Combat
troops (i.e., intended to fight) were "combat troops."

Claims of "doublespeak" arose when,  in 1964-65, U.S. advisors began to
take ever more active combat roles with the sometimes less than fully
enthused South Vietnamese.

A synonym for "BOTG" is "ground troops" or "ground forces," but those lack
that figure-of-speech pizazz. Also, usage has capriciously decreed that
BOTG apply mainly to combat personnel, whereas "ground troops" is (for
equally inexplicable reasons) more ambiguous.

Maybe boots gotta march or "walk all over you," but ground forces just wait
to be told what to do.

JL

On Fri, Sep 26, 2014 at 12:01 PM, Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at yale.edu>
wrote:

> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
> -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at YALE.EDU>
> Subject:      Re: "boots on the ground"
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> On Sep 26, 2014, at 11:08 AM, Joel S. Berson wrote:
>
> > At 9/26/2014 09:55 AM, Jonathan Lighter wrote:
> >=20
> >> If I hear this phrase again I'm going to scream. In fact, I might as =
> well
> >> do it now and get it over with.
> >>=20
> >> Ah, back to normal. Jake Tapper and his guests managed to say "boots =
> on the
> >> ground" *eight* times in less than two minutes, which averages out to =
> one
> >> boot roughly every seven seconds.
> >=20
> > Proves that the U.S. is heading for a massive re-engagement.
>
> Maybe we should just airlift a massive bunch of boots and drop them on =
> ISIS forces.  Speaking of which, does anyone have a take on why the U.S. =
> government (and maybe U.K., I can't remember) insists on referring to =
> our enemy as ISIL when everyone else calls them ISIS?  Whenever someone =
> explains that ISIL is for "the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant", I =
> keep thinking of Oscar Levant and his spoken punctuation marks. =20
>
> LH
> >=20
> >=20
> >> =
> http://thelead.blogs.cnn.com/2014/09/24/roundtable-more-u-s-ground-troops-=
> likely/
> >>=20
> >> (Read the text for the three additional "boots on the ground.")
> >>=20
> >> Plus. OED actually wants to link the "boot" in "boots on the ground" =
> with
> >> def. 1d, namely "A recruit at a boot camp."  So what these people  =
> are
> >> "really" talking about, I mean etymologically, is "untrained recruits =
> on
> >> the ground."   Make sense? It does to somebody.
> >>=20
> >> The service paper "Stars and Stripes" adds that "boots on the ground" =
> is
> >> "slang."   How would that be?
> >=20
> > Because it confused "slang" with "metaphor"?
> >=20
> > Joel
> >=20
> > ------------------------------------------------------------
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>
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