bovver boots

English

Etymology

From bovver (“trouble”) + boots.

Noun

bovver boots pl (plural only)

1. (1970s British slang) Stout lace-up boots, especially Dr. Martens, perceived to be worn for the purpose of kicking people in fights, and popular with skinheads or other troublemakers out looking for bovver.
   • 1970 March 29, Nik Cohn, “England's New Teen Style Is Violence”, in The New York Times‎^[1], →ISSN:

     Their byword is Aggro (Aggravation) and their crucial enemies are hippies, homosexuals and Pakis (Pakistanis or Indians). When they catch one, they use their shaven skulls for butting, their Bovverboots for caving in ribs.

   • 1991, Rupert Loydell, review of England's Dreaming: Sex Pistols and Punk Rock, in December 1991-January 1992, ThirdWay, page 41,

     I remember a punk friend - cockerel haircut, leather trousers, bovver boots, and ripped jumper - being shocked at the TV retrospective of the mid-eighties where long-haired oiks in flared trousers stared desultorily at some screaming youths on stage.

   • 2006, Stuart Hall, Tony Jefferson, Resistance Through Rituals: Youth Subcultures in Post-War Britain, 2nd edition, page 42:

     The various youth subcultures have been identified by their possessions and objects: the boot-lace tie and velvet-colourd drape jacket of the Ted, the close crop, parker^[sic] coats and scooter of the Mod, the stained jeans, swastikas and ornamented motorcycles of the bike-boys, the bovver boots and skinned-head of the Skinhead, the Chicago suits or glitter costumes of the Bowieites, etc.

   • 2011, Christine Barter, David Berridge, Children Behaving Badly: Peer Violence Between Children and Young People, page 96:

     Their image of racism was not what our political culture has come to expect – that is, the Nazi, the shaven-headed skinhead with bovver boots. Rather, they were stylishly dressed in suits and wearing Ben Sherman shirts and Armani sunglasses.

Translations

bovver boots

• Dutch: marsheerbotten
• Polish: glany

Further reading

• bovver boot on Wikipedia.Wikipedia
• Jonathon Green (2024) “bovver boots n.”, in Green’s Dictionary of Slang