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Chris -- 2018-04-11

#1 2009-05-11 11:57:42

kem
Eggcornista
From: Victoria, BC
Registered: 2007-08-28
Posts: 2851

boondocks << boomdocks/boondogs

One of my prized possession in the 1950s was a box of about twenty foreign coins. These small-denomination coins from a number of East Asian countries and Pacific islands were true treasure for a ten-year old. Some of the coins had odd shapes-one, I remember, had a hole in the middle. I didn’t know where the box and its contents came from. I wondered why anyone would collect such an unusual assortment of coins.

When I returned from my first trip abroad, I came home with a pocketful of unspendable small-denomination change from several countries. Those coins gave me the clue I needed to make a guess about the origin of my box of coins. The Asian coins, I realized with an eclat of insight, must have come from WWII soldier/sailors connected to my family. This box was someone’s pocket change, a metal record of a dozen shore leaves in the Pacific theater of war.

Soldiers also brought back from the war boxes of strange words. From the Philippines they imported the word “boondocks,” an English approximation of the Tagalog word for a mountainous area. Although the term became part of military slang soon after American imperial adventures in the Philippines at the end of the nineteenth century (See the answers.com backgrounder on the word’s origins), “boondocks” didn’t come into general circulation until after WWII.

“Boondocks” increased in popularity in the two decades after the war. By the 1960s it was a fixture in U. S. high school slang. At the height of its popularity the term was immortalized by singer Billy Joe Royal in the 1965 song “Down in the Boondocks” (watch him sing it at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mVPJvk4t6SQ ).

I knew what boondocks were when I was in high school. They were backwater regions that were far removed from the places where any status-conscious high school student should want to be, rural boggy dingles with more animals than people. But where had the word itself come from? It seemed to have something to do with docks, but what was a “boon?”

Apparently other people have also been perplexed by this feral word. Some have even tried to tame its wildness with eggcornical re-imagings. A number of web sites, for example, record the phrase “in the boomdocks.” Perhaps the writers were thinking of a large dockyard that was thick with sailing ships, booms cantilevered from hundreds of masts. Or perhaps they envisioned a busy dockyard in boom times. Some instances of this eggcorn:

Response to a newspaper article “Putting a team in the boomdocks is incredible frustrating. ”

Political piece “we must beware Nazi skinheads in the boomdocks.”

Hotel review “This place is basically in the boomdocks if you walk deeper into Cambridge. There is nothing going on. ”

Another almost-as-frequent permutation of this term is “in the boondogs.” This may be a melding of “boondocks” with the idiom “gone to the dogs.” I picture a house in the boondogs as a rural, run-down cabin guarded by a pack of underfed curs.

Car forum post “It was recovered on Sun Jan 8th out in the boondogs. 215st and Stony Plain Rd in Edmonton.”

Post on a web forum “some of my customers are on slow 56kbps modems in the boondogs.”

Asian international school forum “As it turned out, we didn’t like the environment at SAS anyway, not to mention that it’s located out in the boondogs.”

I lost my box of coins after I left high school. I still remember the Billy Joe tune, though. I wish I had kept the coins and lost the tune.


Hatching new language, one eggcorn at a time.

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#2 2009-05-11 12:44:04

burred
Eggcornista
From: Montreal
Registered: 2008-03-17
Posts: 1112

Re: boondocks << boomdocks/boondogs

♪Down in the boondoggles♪.

Is there a hint of boombox in boomdocks?

Boondogs looks a bit like a blend that started in the boondocks and never quite made it all the way to the political boondoggles. Evidence for this confusion might be provided by hits for “boondockle”. Et voila:

You insist on blindly following a criminal into whatever boondockle is currently on the agenda of this failed administration.
(http://www.progressnowcolorado.org/page … st/al/Cq3Z)

Last edited by burred (2009-05-11 22:39:05)

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#3 2015-08-10 17:34:33

David Bird
Eggcornista
From: The Hammer, Ontario
Registered: 2009-07-28
Posts: 1690

Re: boondocks << boomdocks/boondogs

♪Out in the moon docks♪.

When I asked where we would be doing this chore, he said, “Oh. Someplace vay out in the moonrocks.”
“Hmm … Where?”
“Out in za moonrocks. The moonies. You know. The countryside.”
Second person account

I really wish the admins did their job they’re so many morons in Rotterdam and Europoort it’s not funny and they just sit there doing whatever it is they do. Then you have the morons out in the moonies.
yootoob

Dumont’s (L”HUMANITE) latest feature is once again set out in the moonies, the Boulonnais region around Calais where a series of murders have taken place.
film review

Next time you’re out in the moondocks drop into a farming supplies shop and try buying some Nitrile milking gloves.
model plane hobbyist

Kids will be fine! DH grew up out in the moon docks with just his brother, and they stayed with grandma until school age (6-7 here). And he’s perfectly social and normal :) haha!
Raisin babies

had reservations there on my last trip…....it is out in the moon docks,,,,,,,,so I made a last minute switch to the Waterfront
chica lorn

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#4 2015-08-10 23:16:58

kem
Eggcornista
From: Victoria, BC
Registered: 2007-08-28
Posts: 2851

Re: boondocks << boomdocks/boondogs

You can’t get much more in the boonies than being on the moon.


Hatching new language, one eggcorn at a time.

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