boots on the ground
n.pl.— «Our cooperation with “boots on the ground” helps assure their future military and political cooperation while increasing United States influence worldwide.» —“FY 97 Defense Authorization” by Dennis J. Reimer in Washington, D.C. Congressional Testimony Mar. 13, 1996. (source: Double-Tongued Dictionary)
Further reading
It was a dark and stormy night. So begins the long and increasingly convoluted prose of Edwards Bulwer-Lytton’s best-known novel. Today the annual Bulwer-Lytton Contest asks contestants for fanciful first sentences that are similarly...
Enthusiastic book recommendations! Martha’s savoring the biography of Alexander von Humboldt, the 19th-century explorer, polymath, and naturalist who revolutionized our understanding of nature and predicted the effects of human activity on...