premise: Also Went-worth/Flexner and Chapman both cite the term the leather as meaning a kick, but they date the term from 1946, citing a passage from Damon   he would give his fallen foe what we called `the leather,' meaning a few boots abaft the ears.
hypothesis: Using the phrase "the leather" to mean a kick was cited by both Went-worth/Flexner and Chapman, which they trace to the 1946 writing of Damon in which he mentions giving a bested enemy "the leather," by which he indicated a "few boots abaft the ears."