boondocks

30 March 2026

Boondocks is a relic of American colonialism. British English imported lots of words from its far-flung colonial possessions, but American colonial aspirations primarily produced words derived from Mexican Spanish or North American and Hawaiian indigenous languages. This one, however, is an exception, taking the word from Tagalog, the language of the Philippines that is spoken by more people in that country than any other.

Boondocks is from the Tagalog bundok (mountain) + -s (English plural suffix). In English, the the word refers to any remote or isolated place. It made its way into English during the U.S. occupation of the Philippines following the Spanish-American War. For several decades, the word was used almost exclusively by marines and soldiers, entering into the general discourse during the Vietnam War era.

The U.S. seized the Philippines from Spain in 1898, and from 1899–1902 fought and won an insurgency against Filipino resisters. During that war and in the occupation that followed many U.S. soldiers and marines were stationed on the islands. In 1905, as part of that occupation, a U.S. Army officer, W.E.W. MacKinlay wrote A Handbook and Grammar of the Tagalog Language, which uses bundok multiple times in various phrases and contains a glossary entry that reads, “The mountain. Ang bundok.” Of course, the uses in MacKinlay’s book are not English ones, but it is the first step in the word’s entry into English.

Within five years, Webster’s New International Dictionary of the English Language had included an entry for the word:

|| bun-docˊ (bo͞on-dok´), n. Also bondoc. [Tag.] A mountain. Also, in colloq. English (usually pl., pronounced bŭn´do͝oks), the hills and woods in general; the wilds; any place at a distance from a center of population. Phil.I.

That dictionary clearly indicates that the word is a foreign one and not yet completely Anglicized, but the dictionary notes it is used colloquially by English speakers. Presumably, that means by soldiers.

The earliest appearance of boondocks in print that I’m aware of is in an 8 February 1914 letter by a U.S. Army soldier stationed in the Philippines that was printed in his hometown newspaper, New York’s Allegany County News, some months later:

The other companies I believe had it strenuous enough for there was out post [sic] duty a plenty and maneuvers in the boondocks.

And there is this, written by a sailor or marine on 19 October 1914, that was printed in Missouri’s Walnut Grove Tribune the following December:

Tho’ I was only an innocent bystander, my heart filled with pride at the showing they made, and the progress of civilization under the direction of Uncle Sam. I am satisfied that the interest of the patrons of the public schools was aroused through the efforts of those little brown squaws and their pupils, and education is advancing with long strides on the Naval Reservation and the bondocks roundabout.

The verb to boondock, meaning to conduct a military exercise in a wild or remote region dates to the World War II era in Marine Corps use. Later, the verb would be adopted by civilians with the sense of to go camping.

Aside from the occasional civilian use, boondocks remained largely within the province of the Marine Corps until the Vietnam War, although the context was not limited to the Philippines, being used wherever the Marines were posted. But after Vietnam, the word spread out into general use.

Sources:

Cooksey, Ben. “From the Philippines” (19 October 1914). Walnut Grove Tribune (Missouri), 9 December 1914, 1/4. Newspapers.com.

Green’s Dictionary of Slang, accessed 7 March 2026, s.v. boondocks, n.

Keenan, John. “Participated in Mock War in the Philippine Islands” (8 February 1914). Allegany County News (Whitesville, New York), 2 April 1914, 2/2. NYS Historic Newspapers.

Lighter, Jonathan, ed. Historical Dictionary of American Slang, vol.1, 1994, s.v. boondock n.

MacKinlay, William Edbert Wheeler. A Handbook and Grammar of the Tagalog Language. Washington: Government Printing Office, 1905, 44. Archive.org.

Oxford English Dictionary Online, September 2025, s.v. boondocks, n., boondock, v.

Webster’s New International Dictionary of the English Language (1910). Springfield, Mass.: G. and C. Merriam Company, 1920, s.v. bun-doc. HathiTrust Digital Library.

Photo credit: Ronronpalma, 2018. Wikimedia Commons. Licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license.