Learn English – How common is the term “boondoggle”? And what is its origin

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Even for a country well accustomed to foreign policy boondoggles,
it was an impressive body count. Eighty Americans, eight Brits, eight
Germans — no French because they'd been boycotting Western diplomatic
functions in Cairo.
The Brethren By John Grisham

I can safely say I have never come across boondoggle before, I guessed it meant complicated, esoteric maneuvers of sorts. Dictionary.com says: a project funded by the federal government out of political favoritism that is of no real value to the community or the nation.

Online Etymology Dictionary provides further information

boondoggle (n.) 1935, American English, of uncertain origin, popularized during the
New Deal as a contemptuous word for make-work projects for the
unemployed. Said to have been a pioneer word for "gadget;" it also was
by 1932 a Boy Scout term for a kind of woven braid.

  • If boondoggle was originally a name for a gadget could dongle be derived from it? Which Dictionary.com defines: Also called wireless adapter. A word that was coined in 1985 or thereabouts.

  • Could boondoggle be considered a blend word composed of boon + doggle?

The only definitions I found for doggle was an affectionate term for a small dog and a child's marble. Nevertheless, it does sound like a name for a knot and an easy one to master but perhaps I'm influenced by doddle, a BrEng term meaning a very easy task.

  • Or a nonce word?

A nonce word is a lexeme created for a single occasion to solve an
immediate problem of communication. The term is used because
such a word is created "for the nonce" and is thus "an invented or
accidental linguistic form, used only once"
Wikipedia

But if John Grisham used it in his 2000 novel, I am inclined to believe it must be a well-established term in American English. One that many Americans must be familiar with.

  • So how would linguists define the word boondoggle?
  • And I would also like to know how common is boondoggle and whether it is used outside of politics.

Best Answer

World Wide Words defines boondoggle as:

  • the typically North American term for an unnecessary or wasteful project that is often applied in two specific ways:

    • to describe work of little or no value done merely to appear busy,
    • in reference to a government-funded project with no purpose other than political patronage. It can also be used for an unnecessary journey by a government official at public expense.

As for its origin it says:

  • Part of its oddity lies in its sudden emergence into public view in an article in the New York Times on 4 April 1935. This had the headline “$3,187,000 Relief is Spent to Teach Jobless to Play ... Boon Doggles Made”. The “boon doggles” of the headline turn out to be small items of leather, rope and canvas, which were being crafted by the jobless during the Great Depression as a form of make-work. The article quoted a person who taught the unemployed to create them that the word was “simply a term applied back in the pioneer days to what we call gadgets today”. He suggested that boondoggles had been small items of leatherwork which were made by cowboys on idle days as decorations for their saddles.

Regarding its early usage and further evidence of its origin:

  • The word instantly became famous. It seems that Americans had been feeling the lack of a good word to describe unnecessary, wasteful, or fraudulent projects and leapt upon it with delight. It had actually been around for some years, though attracting little notice. The first appearance of the word currently known is this, reporting the visit of the Prince of Wales (later Edward VIII) to the World Boy Scouts Jamboree at Birkenhead, across the River Mersey from Liverpool:*

    • The Prince also wore around his scout hat a “boondoggle,” which is a bright leather braided lanyard worn much in the manner of the hat cord used by the United States Army. (New York Herald Tribune, 3 Aug 1929.)

  • A more expansive mention appeared in a British publication later in the month:

    • The chief scout has recently been presented by the University of Liverpool with a Degree, and by the scouts of America with a boondoggle. Of the two, I think I should prefer the boondoggle. Great as is the honour conferred by the Seat of Learning, there is a homely flavour about the other gift which touches the heart even more. “Boondoggle.” It is a word to conjure with, to roll around the tongue; an expressive word to set the fancy moving in strange and comforting channels; and it rhymes with “goggle,” “boggle,” and “woggle,” three of the most lighthearted words in the English language. (Punch, 14 Aug. 1929)

  • The Daily Messenger of Canandaigua, New York, explained the background to this puzzling item on 20 August 1931:

    • The boondoggle, which leaped literally into fame overnight when it was introduced by Rochester Boy Scouts at the jamboree in England, is a braided lanyard on which various things such as whistles can be hung. So fascinating do the boys find it, that they have spent practically all their spare time on the work.

  • This is confirmed by a report of a scout camp the following year, which also suggests a broader meaning for the word as a type of leatherwork:

    • Several thousand yards of boondoggle material have also been stocked in the craftshop to meet the demand of scouts for making lanyards, whistles, cards, bells, hatbands, neckerchief slides, a craft which last year consumed over 3000 yards of imitation leather braid. (Oakland Tribune, 29 May 1932.)

  • On 6 April 1935, two days after the New York Times article appeared, a contrary view about the origin of the word was published in a syndicated snippet in the Nevada State Journal:

    • “The word ‘boondoggle’ was coined out of the blue sky by Robert H. Link, eagle scout,” wrote Hastings. “It has absolutely no significance except that it has come to mean a good-looking addition to the uniform.”

According to this final source, the more reliable origin is the scouting context, rather than the Cowboys of the pioneer days:

  • Mr Link, later a scoutmaster, was also said to have been its originator in an item in a magazine called Word Study later the same year. He is now often quoted in reference works as its inventor. As all the early appearances of boondoggle — none before 1929 — are in connection with Scouts’ lanyards, it is indeed likely that it was created in that milieu. The stories about cowboys and pioneer days have nothing going for them apart from the guesses of one person reported in the 1935 New York Times article. It was that article that converted boondoggle from a word existing quietly in its own small world to one of public importance and continuing usefulness.

(from world wide words)

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