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Re: modern etymology

According to the 2011 PBS documentary Prohibition, the term bootlegging was popularized when thousands of city dwellers sold liquor from flasks they kept in their boot legs all across major cities and rural areas.

This appears to be a bowdlerized version of history. The books I am looking at all pretty much agree that the Prohibition-era term refers to the practice of women who wore large skirts to hide bottles of liquor strapped to their boot legs. Viriditas (talk) 01:09, 3 December 2024 (UTC)

Off hand, I wonder how many city dwellers, men or women, wore boots large enough to hold flasks. More to the point, we go with what reliable sources say, and if reliable sources disagree, we can say that, giving space in the text proportionate to the different sources. - Donald Albury 14:37, 3 December 2024 (UTC)

"The books I am looking at" isn't a very credible source. https://www.britannica.com/topic/bootlegging Gunslinger2071 (talk) 19:16, 2 June 2025 (UTC)

And yet another etymology, saying that the term originated with moonshiners in the South.[Willing, Joseph K. (May 1926). "The Profession of Bootlegging". The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science. 125 (1): 40–48. doi:10.1177/000271622612500106. ISSN 0002-7162.] NOte that the source implies that the term was little known before prohibition. We cannot rely on any one source, but must acknowledge that the origins of the term are obscure. - Donald Albury 21:11, 2 June 2025 (UTC)

I wouldn't use the book Prohibition and Bootlegging in the American West as a source, but it does have a picture of a flapper from the '20s slipping a bottle of liquor into the top of her boot—looks like it would be a tight fit, though. The generic swastikas on the tiled floor are noteworthy, the arms run the same as the Nazi ones. Carlstak (talk) 01:50, 3 June 2025 (UTC)

Looks like a staged photo. Swastika tiles used to be fairly common. Donald Albury 12:50, 3 June 2025 (UTC)

Bootlegging meaning

First off, the claim that "bootlegging" is specific to land smuggling is unsourced and sounds like folk etymology.

More importantly this OED revision note asserts that "bootlegging" meant the sale of illegal alcohol, not the smuggling. This is reflected in the current version of the OED. And of course modern usage has "bootlegging" refer to the sale and distribution of all sorts of illegal goods, and has an implication of inferior quality. Isaac Rabinovitch (talk) 12:37, 29 March 2025 (UTC)