bovver boots

noun

Stout lace-up boots, especially Dr. Martens, perceived to be worn for the purpose of kicking people in fights, and popular with skinheads or other troublemakers out looking for bovver.

Meanings

nounbovver boots pl (plural only)
  1. pluralplural only1970s UK slangStout lace-up boots, especially Dr. Martens, perceived to be worn for the purpose of kicking people in fights, and popular with skinheads or other troublemakers out looking for bovver.

    Their byword is Aggro (Aggravation) and their crucial enemies are hippies, homosexuals and Pakis (Pakistanis or Indians). When they catch one, they use their shaven skulls for butting, their Bovverboots for caving in ribs.

    1970 March 29, Nik Cohn, “England's New Teen Style Is Violence”, in The New York Times, →ISSN
    3 more examples

    1991, Rupert Loydell, review of England's Dreaming: Sex Pistols and Punk Rock, in December 1991-January 1992, ThirdWay, page 41, I remember a punk friend - cockerel haircut, leather trousers, bovver boots, and ripped jumper - being shocked at the TV retrospective of the mid-eighties where long-haired oiks in flared trousers stared desultorily at some screaming youths on stage.

    The various youth subcultures have been identified by their possessions and objects: the boot-lace tie and velvet-colourd drape jacket of the Ted, the close crop, parker^([sic]) coats and scooter of the Mod, the stained jeans, swastikas and ornamented motorcycles of the bike-boys, the bovver boots and skinned-head of the Skinhead, the Chicago suits or glitter costumes of the Bowieites, etc.

    2006, Stuart Hall, Tony Jefferson, Resistance Through Rituals: Youth Subcultures in Post-War Britain, 2nd edition, page 42

    Their image of racism was not what our political culture has come to expect – that is, the Nazi, the shaven-headed skinhead with bovver boots. Rather, they were stylishly dressed in suits and wearing Ben Sherman shirts and Armani sunglasses.

    2011, Christine Barter, David Berridge, Children Behaving Badly: Peer Violence Between Children and Young People, page 96

Origin

Translations

Dutch marsheerbotten
  • marsheerbottenbovver boots
Polish glany
  • glanybovver boots
Cite this entry
APA

bovver boots. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 5, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/bovver%20boots

MLA

“bovver boots.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/bovver%20boots. Accessed November 5, 2026.

Chicago

WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “bovver boots,” accessed November 5, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/bovver%20boots.

Source: bovver boots on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.