Synechdoches I hate

August 15, 2014 • 8:31 am

“Boots on the ground” is today’s overused phrase.  Why not simply “soldiers”? Or “troops”? This shopworn phrase is even longer than the simpler alternative. It serves only one purpose: to make someone look like they’re either politically or militarily in the know.

I can see it now—a report about Coachella or Burning Man that says, “There will be an estimated ten thousand Birkenstocks on the ground.”

And while we’re at it, what is this “on the ground” business? How many news stories do we see that say, “The facts on the ground are . . . “? Are there other kinds of facts, like facts in the air: perhaps the number of airplanes in combat?

Get off my lawn!

111 thoughts on “Synechdoches I hate”

  2. Jerry, I had no idea that you were a burgeoning comedy writer. This is great stuff. Do let me know when you appear with a microphone in hand in front of a brick wall.

  3. It’s just a way to dismiss the effects of war on actual human beings. You know, like the term “collatoral damage.”

    2. Definitely an attempt to soften, detach, separate; a euphemism. Imagine if instead it was reported: “Twenty thousand fathers, husbands, sons, daughters, uncles, neices, nephews, aunts, neighbours, colleagues, friends were deployed to fight….”

  4. Precisely. It distinguishes ground troops, i.e. the army or special forces, from air power, whether human or drone.

      1. Bullshit. The biggest component of the Air Force are on the ground doing maintenance, security, logistics and so on. It’s not to distinguish the airborne fighters from the troops fighting on the ground, it’s to dehumanize the troops in general. It’s a marketing campaign which unfortunately seems to be succeeding.

      1. ‘Boots on the ground’ versus ‘ground troops’. Both phrases contain 2 stressed syllables and therefore in spoken English take about the same amount of time to say. Try it out. Arguably, the former is more poetic but its overuse devalues the imagination of whoever first coined the phrase.

        Cf. ‘Bíg cáts kíll dógs’ with ‘The bóy stood ón the búrning déck’.

        Slaínte.

  5. Nobody really wants to commit “soldiers” or “troups” into a combat zone, but a whole C130 full of boots? Hell ya.

    1. Rickflick: that made me laugh; but in all seriousness, I think you’ve hit on the most cogent reason.

    2. Yes, it dehumanises them doesn’t it. No PEOPLE are at risk, just a bunch of boots. This is of course how they’re seen by those in power, not people, but assets.

  6. Only tangential military experience here, but it was always my understanding that this phrase encompassed non-fighting support systems as well as actual warfighters (an actual term used by the Department of Defense). Mostly, however, I think it’s just necessary in this day and age when we don’t need to be present (in the form of persons) to exert military force. But I certainly agree that the American press could vary things a bit more!

  7. At least we seem to be past the egregious “blood and treasure” formulation for the costs of war. I always thought the phrase smacked way too much of 19th century colonialism — it sounds like something Rudyard Kipling would have written.

  8. I agree with the reasons you list, but I think there is another one. It’s a type of deception. We can drop bombs from planes and seem relatively uninvolved. If we have “boots on the ground”, we are deeply involved. Without “boots on the ground”, we expect to suffer fewer casualties, which makes war easier to sell.

    Perhaps this is a primary purpose of any synecdoche. Changing the concrete referent changes our emotional response, or makes our emotional response easier to manipulate.

  9. As a syndic in this syntactical synod on synonyms and synecdoche, let me synopsize a synergistic and synthetical synteresis: let conscience be your guide. Here endeth the lesson. Amen.

  10. Police officers speaking on television seem to be the most creative (and obsessed) with pseudo-technical language.
    Suspects never just turn a corner, they proceed to move in a cornerly direction 😀

    2. Cornerly direction- LOL. LIKE Woody Allen’s pain i. His “chestal” area. But you are right about cops on TV news: why use 5 syllables when you can use 50. Maybe they’re like Dickens and get paid by the word?

      1. Here’s one from an actual police report:
        ” I attempted to apply an escort hold to the subject, but I noted resistive tension in his arm, so I applied pain compliance instead. The subject actively resisted, so I administered a focused knee strike to the lower abdominal area, and decentralized the subject.”
        😀
        Or:
        “all items depicted in the five photos were later observed by this officer while I was observing the said property which was observed in the trunk of the vehicle.”
        I SAW THE DRUGS IN THE TRUNK OF THE CAR. How hard is that?

  11. I bet not many people know how to pronounce “synecdoche”. I got a shock when I heard it spoken. You can look a right fool when you speak words that you know but have not heard spoken before.

      1. There is a fine Philip Seymour Hoffman film called “Synecdoche, New York,” set in Schenectady, New York. I find it handy for remembering just how to pronounce this!

      2. It’s one of the problems and benefits of universal literacy, I suppose. Back in the 18th century, the Scottish Dukedom of Auchinleck was pronounced ‘Affleck’: now it is widely pronounced as written. For me it was the country, ‘Eth-aye-opia’ – I was 9 – and ‘segue’ pronounced as in the German ‘sieg’.

        Slaínte.

          1. Old family names are the worst:

            Belvoir → Beaver Cholmondely → Chumley Dalziel → Dee-ell Featherstonehaugh → Fanshaw Mainwaring → Mannering Tollemache-Tollemache → Tool-make Tol-mack

            /@

          2. Smith anyone? Jones? I would prefer single letters like my granddaughter uses for her stuffed bear “B”.

          3. How the hell is anyone expected to say these names correctly if you’ve never come across them before? Featherstonehaugh = Fanshaw ? Fan my brow! (Something my maths teacher in secondary school always used to say whenever he was flabbergasted)

          4. I always thought it was “Fearnshaw” – damned English names. Well, just a few months ago I might have been reading this in Reading.

          5. Place names: Okeford Fitzpaine – Fipenny Ockford. Now that’s just perverse.

            Slaínte.

          6. @Jiten

            “How the hell is anyone expected to say these names correctly if you’ve never come across them before?”

            Because if you write the names as you pronounce them, you’ll end up with this London schoolchild’s spelling of a famous British person – Chuka Embura.

            Do you know who it is yet? And no, it’s not Rolf Harris even though RH has been in this person’s house.

            Slaínte.

          9. Dalziel is soooooo bizzare!! Do you Brits/Scots just arbitrarily decide to throw away 2/3 of the letters when you pronounce the names?? Why don’t you spell it shorter to begin with, like color:-))

            My embarassing never-heard word was bedraggled, which I pronounced Bed- raggled, as in raggled from getting out of bed…Made sense to me at 8 or 9. Gave my parents a good chuckle.

          10. “Do you Brits/Scots just arbitrarily decide to throw away 2/3 of the letters”

            The Irish did that with most of their language before the post-WW2 (?) spelling reformation. 😮

            /@

    2. I very much appreciate learning the meanings with pronunciations of words new to me — as are this one and its derivations.

      So before I myself can conduct some measure of correctitude with speaking synecdochically, I thought via http://www.merriam-webster.com/audio.php?file=synecd04&word=synecdochically&text=%5C-ki-k(%C9%99-)l%C4%93%5C that I would practice these two words — speaking synecdochically — tongue twister – style … … xten times somewhat swiftly.

      No can do !

      At all.
      Blue

      1. Om’golly, Mr Steinlage, that is amazingly hilarious – sounding !

        I am still guffawing after playing it repeatedly.

        Love it ! Thank you for posting.
        Blue

        1. Okay, so then I got completely off track ‘nd topic just now — and began listening to this dude’s pronunciations of every other word that kept popping up on the screen.

          He / with his voice is “trying” so, so properly to get ‘em all with the exact measure of correctitude as the voices inside the Merriam – Webster’s audio example – sites pronounce.

          And every time with every word — his ? Epic fails galore !

          Funny.
          Blue

  13. your absolutely right at least some one know what there talking about besides me like i don’t understand that but what about Obama he sent troops over to Iranian well i think was any way but he sent the us air force over there for an aerial attack and were trying to make peace not lose it

  14. Chicagoans remember Sunday, March 30, 2003, when Mayor Daley ordered crews to destroy the runway of Meigs Field Airport by bulldozing large X-shaped gouges into the surface. Every news reporter had to add- breathlessly, and with a sense of urgency- that this was done “Under the Cover of Darkness.” I think that’s when the trend started.

  15. And since there should be two boots per soldier, it’s just silly to use the term for numbers.

    1. Unless they do so correctly–i.e., 2X the number of soldiers–for the psychological advantage of sounding like a bigger force…(In which case they should use “toenails.”)

  18. And while we’re at it, what is this “on the ground” business? How many news stories do we see that say, “The facts on the ground are . . . “? Are there other kinds of facts, like facts in the air: perhaps the number of airplanes in combat?

    We used to hear a lot about the Arab Street.

  20. From an official capability perspective, it means a physical presence of some representative at a specific location ((also ‘eyes on the target’ for known whereabouts by an onsite witness) and not necessarily or implicitly ground troops. It could be agents, diplomats, funded project workers, etc., usually capable of doing something.

    1. While I’m sure that this is true from an operational perspective, as someone whom has worked extensively in TV news, Jerry’s assessment of on-air “talent” trying to sound like they know more than they do is spot on.

  22. Couldn’t agree more. Another one that has irritated me for years is “first responders,” even when it’s just rescuing a moggie stuck in a tree.

    Oh, and here’s another CNN trope: “Mission creep,” which could be interpreted to mean that there’s a padre somewhere gone sexually astray.

      1. In what sense is it a euphemism? What is the unpleasant thing that would otherwise be referred to by a blunt word or expression?

        The term effectively describes anyone who’s been designated or trained to respond to an emergency, no matter what service they belong to. So it could be used as a generic term (e.g., in regulations or procedures) or a collective term.

        But I agree that it is poor style to use it to describe a specific individual or team that happen to be the first responders in a particular case; so, if fire fighters rescued that cat, you should say so.

        /@

  25. Are liberal clergy “collars on the ground of being”? 🙂

    More seriously, “facts on the ground” is a phrase that originated in Israeli military-speak. Wiktionary defines it as “A euphemism, similar to fait accompli, used as an oblique way of saying that discussions over the possession of a given piece of territory has been rendered moot by the presence of military forces.”

    Wikipedia states
    “Facts on the ground is a diplomatic term that means the situation in reality as opposed to in the abstract.[citation needed] It originated in discussions of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict, where it was used to refer to Israeli settlements built in the occupied West Bank, which were intended to establish permanent Israeli footholds in Palestinian territory.[1] It is a calque of the Hebrew term “Uvdot Ba’Shetach” (עובדות בשטח) which is frequently used in Israeli political debates and discussions.”

  27. Totally agree. Not to mention that we have to divide the number of boots by two to find haw many soldiers are actually there.

    1. Then how would we know if they are grounded or not? They could be in orbit for all we know.

  30. Just as a general point, all language is metaphorical.

    I read Pinker’s analysis of the first sentence of The Declaration of Independence and there’s hardly a word that isn’t a metaphor, a metonym or synecdoche.

    I mean, ‘declaration’ comes from spoken speech yet it’s a written document; independent is an antonym for ‘dangling from’, etc.

  31. Boots on the ground!? That is not cat culture. Last I checked Crazy Cat threw boots. The proverbial Puss in No Boots.

    But we all know Jerry prefers boots on the table (and in focus of a camera). It’s a professor Ceiling Cat privilege to span the Basement and the Ceiling.

  32. One that always gets me is, “filmed before a live studio audience”. What other kind of studio audience is there? A dead one?

    1. It’s got to the stage that the phrase “boots on the ground” makes me cringe too. I’ve come to hate it.

  33. I strongly disagree. “Boots on the ground” quickly conveys an emotive meaning, where the synecdoche of “boot” instantiates real-world, personal feelings as opposed to the abstract “soldier”. And the use of “ground” (more than synecdoche) also conveys a more real representation of the soldiers’ presence in a hostile land.

    1. It actually works that way in my mind, too. “Soldiers” or “troops” have been used for so long that I don’t stop to think of what they mean anymore–“boots on the ground” thus is more visceral for me. (For now.)

  34. I always thought the ridiculous phrase was made up to disguise the fact that it’s people who are being sent out there to die and to kill. I wouldn’t care much if we sent 200000 pairs of boots to Iraq – that’ll shod a lot of people – but it’s not really the boots that they’re sending, is it?

  35. Birkenstocks on the ground? Count me in! I wish I could go to Burning Man! If I wear them to the store, will that count as 2 Birkenstocks on the ground?

    That aside, I agree with madscientist and KenS. People are sent, not clothes. For some, like John D, it makes it sound more personal; for others, it makes it sound less personal. Personally, I’m not a fan of that bit of rhetoric.

  36. “taking ownership” of something is another really annoying phrase. There’s aCharles Schwab ad that’s been on every night for at least 6 months before the PBS NewsHour in which CS himself speaks overly earnestly about taking ownership of your finances by investing your moolah with him. Drives me nuts. Charles Schwab get off my lawn!!

  38. Although not actually related to Jerry’s subject matter, a friend of mine refers to young, wealthy, trust-fund “hipsters” as, “Trustifarians”.

    2. More horrors:

      “at the coalface”
      “in the real world” – I particularly loathe that one. It implies that I (the speaker) have a superior grasp on what is reality and you don’t.
      “continuous improvement” – a spectacular stupidity. We’ve been continuously improving for freakin’ decades, by now we should be just so unbelievably efficient we need to do no work at all. Curiously, this is not the case.

    1. Finger problems. Let’s try again. It’also not unusual for soldiers to use such language as a form of slang. Referring to troops as boots or bodies is just an informal and unspecific form of address. Some take offence, most don’t.

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