I find it exceptionally irritating
when persons of the British persu-
asion ask questions about any asp-
ect of American Culture that I
cannot answer. I've heard this in-
sult used all my life and have
never known exactly what it means.
This has lead to me spending al-
most an hour trying to track down
the origins of this ambiguous
attack.
Apparently someone has recently
seen fit to devote a whole book to
this and similar slurs:
Your Mother Wears Army Boots: A Treasure Trove of Insults, Slurs, and Putdowns
Address:
http://isbn.nu/0595000940/price/2.html
I hope its origins are thoroughly
explained in this book, but I'm
not going to order it to find out.
This site confirms more or less
Megashawn's speculation on the
subject:
Your mother wears army
boots@Everything2.com
Address:
http://www.everything2.com/index.pl?node_id=1170858
This is a link to a thread that
came up on Google started by some-
one asking the same question. The
speculation about the insult is
more salacious, and therefore
interesting.
Your mother wears army
boots@Everything2.com
Address:
http://www.everything2.com/index.pl?node_id=1170858
I have also sent an E-mail to a
"slangologist" about this matter
and will post his response here if
it says anything more concrete.
My fear is that what the
originator of the insult meant has
been lost to time. It has evolved
into a
rohrschach insult
which sounds like it means more
than it actually does, each person
interpreting it according to the
idiosynchracies of his own person-
al dementia.