[Ads-l] body bag

[Jonathan Lighter]

OED has it from 1947 as "a strong bag in which a corpse is carried, esp.
from a battlefield or the scene of an accident or crime."

1936 _Albany [N.Y.] Evening News_ (Nov. 23) 19: The firemen...[neglected]
to encase the body of John Bermudez in a canvas "body bag" prescribed by
department regulations

1937 _Buffalo [N.Y.] Evening News_ (Feb. 13) 6: Showing how a person who
has  been burned in a fire is removed in a "body bag."

But there was another related sense:

1934 _Jersey Journal_ (Jersey City, N.J.) (Oct. 9) 1: It was necessary for
members of the Emergency Squad to strap Kennedy in a body bag and quiet him
with spirits of ammonia.

1937 _Jersey Journal_ (June 3) 17: A "body bag"...can be roughly described
as a flexible strait-jacket. It is used to hold in restraint insane persons
or those temporarily, but violently deranged.

As a military term, however, I don't find it before 1965 (OED: 2001).  In
WW2, the dead were generally wrapped in government-issue white mattress
covers or else tarps, blankets, or whatever was available.

Missing from OED is the once common sense "a tall, heavy punching bag used
in training by prizefighters and others."

1922 _Plain Dealer_ (Cleveland, O.) (Oct. 13) 18: We...saw...Gibbons
playing handball, then skipping rope, abusing the pulley weights and body
bag and winding up with a few rounds of shadow boxing.

1923 _Casper [Wyo.] Sunday Morning Tribune_  (July 1) 1: He also punched
the body bag for two rounds.

Etc., etc.

JL
-- 
"If the truth is half as bad as I think it is, you can't handle the truth."

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