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Tuesday, March 9, 2010

OK, Einstein. What Is A 'Hurt Locker'?

The internet is abuzz with the meaning origins of the expression hurt locker.

The short answer: a hurt locker is a place where one stores — or finds — hurt, pain, insufficiencies.

According to the publicist for Kathyrn Bigelow's 2010 Oscar-winning film (The Hurt Locker), hurt locker is GI slang for severe injury.

The film's screenwriter, Mark Boal, tells us "if a bomb goes off, you're going to be in the hurt locker. That's how they used it in Baghdad. It means slightly different things to different people, but all the definitions point to the same idea. It's somewhere you don't want to be."

Documented uses in history:

• 1966, according to the linguist's authority on words, the OED (Oxford English Dictionary). The OED's New Words Group cites 1966 as the first usage of hurt locker. "It's from a Texas newspaper and it says
  
  'If an army marches on its stomach, Old Charlie is in the hurt locker'.
  
  Old Charlie is the Viet Cong. It is similar to the phrases world of hurt or world of pain. .
  
  [ Note: in the early days of the Viet Nam war, the US image of the VC was that of a group of inadequately-supplied soldiers. ]


• 2001, AP News, about the Los Angeles Police Department after the Rodney King debacle: 'Right now they're in the hurt locker. Healing takes a long time'


• 2002, Canada's Globe and Mail: "One of the Canadian Armed Forces' officers told me, 'We're gonna find ourselves in the middle of Baghdad, and realize we're in a hurt locker'"


• 2005, soldier-poet Brian Turner published Here, Bullet, a collection of poetry from his tour of duty in 2003-4. Among the poems was The Hurt Locker, about snipers and suicide bombers. The poem opens with
  
  "Nothing but hurt left here,"
  
  and includes lines such as
  
  "Open the hurt locker and learn
  How rough men come hunting for souls."


• When parsed, the components of the expression — as used in this context — might be much older: hurt, as in world of hurt (considerable pain); locker, as in small confined space.
  
  [note: I'm certain that I first heard world of hurt from VietNam-era GIs]

What about the future of the phrase?

• Hurt locker will see a spike in usage, at least temporarily," says Robert Groves, of Collins Dictionary.


• "As long as the expression is trendy, hurt locker will probably be used incorrectly," according to me¹.

¹ That would be I, as quoted in TruthForDummies.com in 2010.

posted by Recovering Republican® © ™  # 12:01 AM

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