boondoggle (n.)
"wasteful expenditure," especially by the government under guise of public good, April 1935, American English; earlier it was a name for a kind of braided leather lanyard made by Boy Scouts and worn by them around the neck or hat. In this sense it is attested from 1930, and according to contemporary accounts the thing and the word were invented around 1928 by the Order of the Arrow of Scouts in Rochester, N.Y. The name might be arbitrary; once it became a vogue word, some newspapers claimed it had been a pioneer word for "gadget," but evidence for that is wanting.
The Prince of Wales was given one by the Rochester Scouts at the Jamboree in the summer of 1929, and wore it, and the boondoggle first came to public attention. In early April 1935, a dispute erupted in New York City over wastefulness in New Deal white-collar relief work programs, including one where men made boondoggles all day. Headline writers picked up the word, and it became at once a contemptuous noun or adjective for make-work projects for the unemployed.
What is all this boondoggling anyhow? If we don't know, it isn't because we haven't been trying to find out. First used by a witness in a Federal relief investigation, the word has swept the country. [Frances Shattuck Nyberg, "Getting Around" column, Baltimore Evening Sun, May 10, 1935]
Trends of boondoggle
updated on October 22, 2022
