Akademik

(SHOO.i.syd BAW.mur)

n.

A suicide bomber who conceals the bomb inside one of his or her shoes. Also: shoe-icide bomber, shuicide bomber.

Tamil Tiger rebels who see suicide bombing as a privilege have protected their leader from potential "shoeicide" bombers. A hardcore group had to remove shoes worn for at least nine hours by journalists and sniff socks. The search was conducted on 200 journalists at Tiger leader Velupillai Prabhakaran's first press conference in 12 years last week.

— "Tamils get toey," Herald Sun, April 16, 2002

It started as a faint sploosh as the first of six pairs of shoes sank beneath the waves some 220 feet below. Bob Jarding, Oscar Merks, Morris Dahl, L. R. Jones, Bob Holden and Jack Starry became the first to cross the Golden Gate Bridge, both ways, barefoot. This was also the first recorded shoe-icide from the bridge.

— E. J. Knapp, "The Day the Walkers Took the Bridge," The San Francisco Chronicle, May 17, 1987

The phrase was probably coined by comedian Jay Leno (or, more likely, by one of his writers). In reference to airline passenger Richard Reid, who on December 22, 2001 tried to detonate a bomb in his shoe, Leno said: "This is something new — a shoeicide bomber."

The word shoeicide is much older, and it usually refers to the destruction of one or more shoes.

franchise terrorism

Terrorism

To the best of my knowledge, I am the originator of the word shoeicide. It was used in my book (you note the example from the SF Chronicle), published several years before Jay Leno took over the Tonight Show.