"boots on the ground"

Wilson Gray hwgray at GMAIL.COM
Fri Sep 26 22:07:19 UTC 2014


On Fri, Sep 26, 2014 at 9:55 AM, Jonathan Lighter <wuxxmupp2000 at gmail.com>
wrote:

> "A recruit at a boot camp."


Better:

"A Navy or a Marines recruit in boot camp."

Unless, of course, "at a boot camp" is the way that it's said in Britspeak.


> The service paper "Stars and Stripes" adds that "boots on the ground" is

"slang."   How would that be?

The "Stars and Stripes" is the military equivalent of the Arlen [Texas]
"Bystander." Who knows what the writer may have meant?

Meanwhile, the right wing has taken to demeaning the female component of
the military as

"boobs on the ground"

-- 
-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.
-Mark Twain

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



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