"bucking for" .. like Klinger
My research suggests the origin of 'bucking for [something]', military slang for something akin to 'trying very hard to achieve [something]' is as a periphrasis for 'washing your underwear in lye'.
This somewhat startling and perhaps overstated conclusion results from my observation that early military use is associated with 'a thorough washing preparatory to trying to be selected as orderly', and the parallel observation that 'to buck', and so 'bucking', referred to the process of washing and bleaching in lye.
In historical order, the evidence is this. First, the pertinent verb and noun:
† buck, v.1
Obs. exc. dial.
1. trans. To steep or boil in an alkaline lye as a first process in buck-washing, or bleaching.
["† buck, v.1". OED Online. March 2016. Oxford University Press. http://www.oed.com/view/Entry/24136 (accessed May 24, 2016).]
The verb with this sense is attested from 1377-1820, from a putative Latin root, "*bucāre to steep in lye, wash clothes". This sense of the verb compares with a noun sense:
buck, n.3
Etymology: In the sense of ‘lye, washing’, evidently belonging to BUCK v.1, from which it is perhaps formed by conversion. ....
....
3. A quantity of clothes, cloth, or yarn, put through the process of bucking, in buckwashing or bleaching; the quantity of clothes washed at once, a ‘wash’.
["buck, n.3". OED Online. March 2016. Oxford University Press. http://www.oed.com/view/Entry/24125 (accessed May 24, 2016).]
This sense of the noun is attested from 1532-1869.
Now, examining the military use, I found this early attestation of the phrase:
(From The Executive Documents of the House of Representatives for the First Session of the Fifty-Second Congress, 1891-'92. The excerpt is from a report on the Michigan Military Academy datelined 1891.)
Ten years later, the following straightforward definition of the phrase "Bucking for orderly" appears in A Manual for Aspirants for Commissions in the United States Army (Ira Louis Reeves, Hudson-Kimberly Publishing Company, 1901):
Here, 'bucking' is presented in its original sense as the act of thoroughly "cleaning clothing and equipment".
As is usual for slang, the adoption and subsequent dissemination of the phrase relied on an amalgamation of familiar uses, literal, dialectal and slang. In the case of 'bucking for', those included earlier phrases, verbal and nominal, such as 'buck up' ('dress up'),
(From The English dialect dictionary, being the complete vocabulary of all dialect words still in use, or known to have been in use during the last two hundred years; founded on the publications of the English dialect society and on a large amount of material never before printed. Ed. by Joseph Wright. Published in six volumes, 1898-1905.)
and 'a buck' ('a dandy or fop'),
(op. cit.).
These uses of 'buck', with extant dates that dovetail with the use of 'to buck' in the sense of 'to wash and bleach thoroughly',
(op. cit.), lend themselves to the later development of the military slang use of 'bucking for' in the sense of 'striving mightily for advancement'. Other senses of 'to buck' likewise probably played a part: salmon bucking their way upstream to spawn, oxen bucking against a plough, horses bucking to dislodge a pesky rider.
So, for your question 2,
What is the origin?
as given above.
For your question 1,
Is this one of those annoying single-use phrases?
No, it has been and continues to be widely used in the general sense. The SOAP corpus (2001-2012, "22,000 transcripts from American soap operas"), for example, contains the following examples from what the corpus creators call "very informal" English:
For your question 3,
What the heck other phrase or word could you use to describe Klinger's actions?
it seems to me that a wide variety of other phrases, some literal, some figurative, are suited to the same general sense:
- Klinger was crusading for discharge.
- Klinger was trying hard to get a discharge.
- Klinger was angling insanely for a discharge.
None of these seem quite as well suited to describing Klinger's behavior as 'bucking for', however, although crusading has parallel merits.
Klinger is striving for a Section 8 because being booted out of the Army for any reason is still preferable in his mind to the alternative of getting shot and killed in Korea.
"Bucking for" is not solely a negative expression. A young person could be working very hard to get straight A's and could be said to be "bucking for" straight A's on his/her report card.
MacMillan Dictionary defines the expression "buck for" as:
buck for something to try hard to get something, especially in your job
Example: "I think she’s bucking for a raise."