Boondoggle

I recently learned where the word boondoggle came from. It's from the early 20th century, and was used by American Boy Scouts to describe the braided leather lanyards they made as craft projects and wore around their necks. 

How did this noun that described a harmless bit of decoration get to the outsized meaning it has today?

Well, during the Depression and the New Deal specifically, there were jobs programs, some of which employed people in the arts. According to the piece I originally heard, as well as on etymonline,

...a dispute erupted in New York City over wastefulness in New Deal white-collar relief work programs, including one where men made boondoggles all day. Headline writers picked up the word, and it became at once a contemptuous noun or adjective for make-work projects for the unemployed.

Headline writers must have loved it: it's such a great word. As further evidence, etymonline goes on to quote the Getting Around column from the Baltimore Evening Sun on May 10, 1935:

What is all this boondoggling anyhow? If we don't know, it isn't because we haven't been trying to find out. First used by a witness in a Federal relief investigation, the word has swept the country. —Frances Shattuck Nyberg

The Wikipedia says the word came from the Roosevelt Troop in Rochester, N.Y., and was first used in print in 1927. 

Some of the examples of "make work" and wasted money on the Wikipedia page are not craft projects at all: they include raking leaves and direct relief (feeding people). I suppose I shouldn't be surprised that media, even 90 years ago, exaggerated to take advantage of a fun bit of verbiage.