Your mother wears army boots!
Posted by Masakim on January 24, 2003
In Reply to: Your mother wears combat boots! posted by Brian from Shawnee on January 24, 2003
: I remember the phrase being "Your mother wears army boots" and I have a vague impression that Bugs Bunny said it once or twice. It has the feeling of being from the WWII-era when almost everyone knew someone in the armed forces. I'd take it to mean "your mother is frumpy", or something like that.
*your mother wears
army boots* is a US exclamatory c.p. -- at first, i.e. during WW2, very derisive,
then jocularly derisive. An occ[asional] var[iant]: _your sister wears army shoes_,
of which Norris M. Davidson, 1969, has written. 'I dimly remember having heard
some nineteen or twenty years ago. It must be a catch phrase, as it makes no sense.'
R[obert] C[laiborne], 1978, comments, 'like *your fadder's mustache*, (to which
it was a frequent counter), usually spoken with a heavy Brooklyn accent, approximating
*ya mudda weahs ahmy boots!*'; and A[nthony] B[rown], 1979, adds the variants
_shoes_ for _boots_; _your mother drives a tank_ or _eats K rations_ or _works
in a dime store_ or _ah, yer mother wears cotton drawers_ (the _ah_ may precede
the other forms also). 'All derisive, of course; there are many other variants'.
From Dictionary of Catch Phrases: American and British, from the Sixteenth Century to the Present Day by Eric Partridge
& Paul Beale