"boots on the ground"

[Dan Goncharoff]

I assume when they wrote "slang" they meant "jargon".

DanG

On Fri, Sep 26, 2014 at 6:07 PM, Wilson Gray <hwgray at gmail.com> wrote:

> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
> -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Wilson Gray <hwgray at GMAIL.COM>
> Subject:      Re: "boots on the ground"
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> 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
>
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