Word.ws English Dictionary

bovver boots

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.

Noun

bovver boots pl (plural only)

  1. (plural, plural-only, 1970s UK slang) 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.
    • 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
    • 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.1991, Rupert Loydell, review of England's Dreaming: Sex Pistols and Punk Rock, in December 1991-January 1992, ThirdWay, page 41

Origin of bovver boots

From bovver (“trouble”) + boots.

Questions about bovver boots

What does bovver boots mean?
Bovver boots means 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.
What part of speech is bovver boots?
Bovver boots is a noun.

Words near bovver boots in the dictionary

  1. bovrilizing
  2. bovuroboside
  3. bovver
  4. bovver bird
  5. bovver birds
  6. bovver boots
  7. bovver boy
  8. bovver boys
  9. bovver girl
  10. bovver girls
  11. bovvered

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: bovver boots (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated:

Cite this entry: “bovver boots.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/bovver_boots. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.