Calling all servicemen, past and present!

[5-90]

I need a little help - nothing much, but it's for my Linguistics class...

We have to do a "Language Data Project," where we collect information and do an analysis of the development or evolution of language, either from nothing or in response to stimuli or pressures.

I have chosen to do a study of "Military Euphemism" - not just stuff like FUBAR/SNAFU/TARFU and stuff like that, but any DoD euphemisms or acronyms you may have run across, or hearing people "dance around" a subject in some manner that civilians would not understand, but we would.

Therefore, for those of you willing to help, I would like the following information:

Name (first only OK - but I need to keep all this sorted)
Branch and Dates of service
AFSC/MOS/Job Code
Phrases and acronymia heard, and where (if you still remember), and (naturally!) what it means. - Oh - and when you first heard it.
Source of phrase/acronym (if guess then so state.) This is a question about derivation/etymology, I want to know what you knew or thought about what you heard


This is a preliminary survey, so I may require more information later (I just want to get a jump on things) and I may have to email back and forth for further detail or explanation.

I'd like to gather as much data as possible, so please feel free to pass this along to other prior/current service as you can.

Information should be sent via email to [email protected], subject "Linguistic Data."

Thank you in advance for your help on this.

Jon "5-90" Kelley
[email protected]

 

[OT]

You've got mail!

 

[Eagle]

What are you really looking for?

Acronyms are shorthand. Euphemisms and linguistic double-speak for saying one thing while meaning something else, or (more accurately) attempting to say something while avoiding actually saying what it is you need to say,

Examples: FUBAR is an acronym

"Strategic withdrawal" is a euphemism for gettin' yer butt kicked.

 

[5-90]

Wups - guess I should have been a bit clearer...

I do have a use for military acronymia, but I am more interested in euphemistic language than verbal shorthand... (FIGMO.)

Like your "strategic withdrawal" (similar to a favourite of mine - "advancing to the rear,") I am more looking for phrases that show an effort to conceal or obfuscate meaning, being a sort of corruption of language for those "in the know." Kinda like when the Pentagod does casualty assessments for disastiers, and talk about "twenty to thirty" but leave the "thousand" out... Things like that.

Terry, I did get your email, and I appreciate it. I intend to use the verbal shorthand of acronymia to show a more practical side of language changes, but I'd be interested in hearing any "military intelligence" you might have picked up along the way - everybody's heard some somewhere down the line...

5-90

 

[Eagle]

You mean like those pesky "insurgents" that we hear about cropping up all over Iraq these days?

Those insurgents are hard to exterminate. I have a box full of medals from Viet Nam with verbiage telling the world what a great job I did in the "allied counter-insurgency effort" back in 1968. They gave out truckloads of ARCOMS in those days, so you might think there shouldn't be any "insurgents" left anywhere, but there seem to be plenty of them in Iraq.

Interesting. My dictionary defines an insurgent as "One who revolts against a civil authority." There isn't any civil authority in Iraq, just a military occupation force. How can there be insurgents if there's no government to revolt against?

Want another? What is it the spin doctors are calling our invasion of Iraq? Something about a "coalition" I believe. What coalition? Basically the invasion was carried out by two countries acting against the wishes of the United Nations and virtually every other country in the world. "Cabal" seems the more appropriate term ... except this plot wasn't any secret.

 

[Boatwrench]

"Hot Lunch" = Vomit....used in front of guests & other civilians to alert the crew someone blew chunks on deck. 1st time I heard it I was as an E3 on a patrol boat that had some cub scouts out for a ride. Chief comes down to the mess deck where I'm watching the TV and he tells me "There's a hot lunch up on deck" I'm thinking cool, I can get something to eat. I then find out he wants me to go clean it. We loving reffered to that PB as "The Vomit Comet" The Coast Guard diet plan, eat all you want and still lose weight.

"Loss of situational awarness" = someone screwed up. Not sure the first time I heard it or the orgins but it is definitely overused. I read mishap reports and 99.9% of them have the cause as 'Loss of Situational Awarness' by the mishap victim. Boat running into heavy seas at night hits debris in the water (a deadhead) and it's caused by the coxswains loss of situational awareness. Big wave hits a boat and a guy falls overboard = loss of situational awareness, should have seen the wave or held on better. the very best was a guy playing QB on a pick up touch football game. He falls and breaks his ankle and it's due to.....Loss of situational awarness, QB should have anticipated the blitz. The best part, the reviewer, usually the unit CO writes in the remarks section that the QB lost situational awareness by not anticpating the blitz and underestimating the defense of the opposing team.

Floater = Drowning victim
Hudson River Whitefish = discarded condoms floating in the harbor

CWO Tom Curran
Machinery Technician
USCG & USCGR 1975 to present

 

[yellowxj]

as scouts sometimes we became "directionally challenged" and or "temporarily immobilized", that always sounded good on the situation report

 

[Eagle]

I forgot the background stuff:

Branch of Service: Army
Date of separation from active service: October 1968
MOS: 12B20 / 71H30
Rank @ separation: SP5-E5

Other candidates:

"Friendly fire incident"

"Collateral Damage"

"Military intelligence"

"Indigent population" (that's different from many Americans today, who are more and more becoming an "indignant" population)

 

[5-90]

bounce

 

[churky89]

Wild Assed Guess

Had a pilot tell me this,well takin WAG here....

WAG= WILD ASSED GUESS

 

[Eagle]

I can't recall if there was any particular "official" term used for native residents, but I do recall that the US military seemed to go out of its way to avoid ever referring to the Vietnamese people in any way that might encourage us sojurs to think of them as (gasp) people. Company grade officers and non-coms alike used terms like "gooks," "slants," "slopes," and "Charlies" to refer to the Vietnamese (strictly speaking, "Charlies" were Vietcong, but the other terms were applied equally to both enemy and ally). The term "people" was never used. Never. I can't prove it, but I have always believed that this was a conscious effort by the military to ensure that we didn't accidently think of the Vietnamese as human beings, because if we did we might have been hesitant to shoot them.

 

[5-90]

No-one else has anything to add?

Eagle - I like the last topic you are bringing up (from a research standpoint) - can you remember anything else about it? Any other VN vets care to chime in there? Anyone? Anyone?

5-90

 

[ECKSJAY]

No-one else has anything to add?

Eagle - I like the last topic you are bringing up (from a research standpoint) - can you remember anything else about it? Any other VN vets care to chime in there? Anyone? Anyone?

5-90

Phil
US Army Active
95B10 (Military Police)
1999-2001

MPs don't get lost, they get 'temporarily disoriented.'

'Tap the forward assist, troop!' On an M16/AR-15 there is a a button on the upper receiver that ratchets the bolt forward in the event of a jam and is part of the misfire clearing process. 'Tapping the forward assist' is what one does to get back into the game, so to speak. If a troop messes up someone might say, "Tap the forward assist and try again." In the cases I saw it usually involved a Drill SGT or senior enlisted person tapping the troop on the back of the helmet...as if to simulate ramming the bolt home on a rifle. - See also, Operator Headspace

'Backblast area clear!?' With a shoulder-fired anti-tank weapon you have a blast that comes out the back for a short distance...thus when preparing to fire one a troop would turn their head and shout, "Backblast area clear!?" and commence firing. Well, when we needed to expel gas from our backsides, we'd turn and shout, "Backblast area clear!?" assgas:

'Must be an operator headspace error.' On a rifle/machinegun the bolt head needs to be calibrated before using (as after cleaning, disassembly, etc) and the headspace and timing need to be adjusted. If not it can result in a weapon malfunction. When you pull a bonehead move you or someone else says, "Most likely cause was an operator headspace error." - See also, Headset Separator

'Check the headset separator!' Our pilots/crew used this term of endearment to lovingly invite another to re-think a plan or idea. What separates a headset when it's worn? That's right...the head.

'Let's pop smoke.' In combat one would toss the appropriate color smoke grenade to signal the Landing Zone to the chopper pilots...to come pick your asses up. When we would say, "Let's pop smoke" it meant that we were ready to leave...usually pretty quickly. Usually accompanied by '...and get out of the AO (Area of Operations).'

I'll edit as I think of more. I just woke up and those are all I can think of right now. I'll ask my GF when she comes home because I KNOW I use these all the time, but they've become such common terms for me I don't know I'm using them.

 

[yellowxj]

Just reminded of
BOHICA, "Bend Over Here It Comes Again" usually means some bad detail/assignment was coming down the command chain and your platoon or squad would have the honor of performing said detail or assignment.

Which reminds me of our MOS. 19D Cavalry scout...we "lovingly" refered to our job as 19 details. Being only a platoon of scouts with hummers in a regiment of mech infantry we got the honor of being taxi drivers for every litter pickup, guest visitor, staff meetings, hunting trips, running gunnery ranges for the infantry, etc.....That might have just been a local one in 1 cav at fort hood.

Travis Mattson
19D10 1989-1994
2/11 ACR Bad Kissingen Germany
1/5 Cav 1st Cavalry Division Fort Hood Texas

 

[ladywolf]

terms

Kristen
15T Blackhawk mechanic/crewchief
June 8, 2000 -present
Silly terms huh? Well, ecksjay nailed a good one with operator headspace and timing....aviation terms...if we have a really stupid private we dont want to touch an aircraft, we might go send them for a roll of flightline (no such thing, flightline is what the acft are sittin on!), the obvious and classic box of gridsquares, chemlight batteries, another one for us is prop and rotor wash (commonly referred to as AIR)(be careful though the airforce actually does have prop and rotor wash). We might send a private to our Production Control office (PC), which is where we monitor how quickly maintenance is coming along and have him ask for the PRC-E7 behind the desk that doesnt work. Little does he know, he just asked for the E7 behind the desk...the PRC is obviously short for prick. Here in iraq we tend to call the locals hadji's or iraqi's.....some terms like raghead/towelhead come into play at times. SNAFU is another one, which is pretty much like FUBAR, but it is situation normal all f**ed up. You can't push start a helicopter (even though we've convinced some infantry guys you can) helicopters dont have windshields, they have windscreens. Ground terms, you may hear someone say "Do an ABS check" with a humvee. Humvee's dont have ABS. It generally is a term to slam on your brakes to get someone to quit tailgating you. I cant think of anything else at the particular moment in time.......will continue when i can think of some more.

Kristen

 

[Eagle]

'Tap the forward assist, troop!' On an M16/AR-15 there is a a button on the upper receiver that ratchets the bolt forward in the event of a jam and is part of the misfire clearing process. 'Tapping the forward assist' is what one does to get back into the game, so to speak. If a troop messes up someone might say, "Tap the forward assist and try again." In the cases I saw it usually involved a Drill SGT or senior enlisted person tapping the troop on the back of the helmet...as if to simulate ramming the bolt home on a rifle. - See also, Operator Headspace

Dang ... a newbie!

I probably shouldn't 'fess up to this, but the original issue M16s we had in 'Nam didn't have forward assist handles. They also didn't have chrome bolts, and it was lack of same that caused most of the jams that led to the addition of the forward assist handle.

We compensated for the lack of the FAH by beating the d***ed rifle over the nearest tree stump, sandbag, or whatever was available when the inevitable stoppage occurred.

I'm not relating this just to tell war stories, but because I find it interesting how slang evolves. Here's a term that I guess all current and recent troops know and use, and when I was in the term didn't exist and would have been meaningless if spoken.

 

[5-90]

Eagle has just proven my point...

The target idea of this paper is the evolution of language in general by the introduction of terms from soldiers, and their dissemination into the common vernacular...

Keep the data coming, please!

5-90

 

[ECKSJAY]

Eagle has just proven my point...

The target idea of this paper is the evolution of language in general by the introduction of terms from soldiers, and their dissemination into the common vernacular...

Keep the data coming, please!

5-90

I also heard some terms (not so 'military, per-se) that were probably just regional. I've included them along with some more terms.

"There you go, you've got it. Now you're trackin' like a VCR."
"You look confused, Private. Yeah, like a monkey tryin' to screw a football."
"That uniform is as fawked up as a football bat."
"That uniform is squared away. Square like a Jolly Rancher." (3/4" by 3/4" square...like the JR packs that came in our MREs)


More to come! This has been difficult!

 

[Eagle]

Dunno if this one qualifies, because I haven't heard it migrate into the civilian populace.

"Burning the shitters."

In Vietnam, although the Air Force guys got to live in real buildings and had real toilets ("shitting over water"), the best we grunts got even in a divisional base camp was latrines with a roof, a board with several holes cut into it for seats, and 55-gallon oil drums with the tops cut off as receptacles. There were no "pumping stations" on base, so the method of sterilizing and disposing of waste was to assign some luckless fool to pull the barrels out once a day, douse liberally with kerosene (or jet fuel, since we were also a Huey base), and fire them up. This duty was, for obvious reasons, referred to simply as "burning the shitters."

That is, until the day a newbie was told to "burn the shitters" and did so -- without the preliminary step of removing the barrels to a safe distance from the latrine structures.

 

[ECKSJAY]

That is, until the day a newbie was told to "burn the shitters" and did so -- without the preliminary step of removing the barrels to a safe distance from the latrine structures.

Kinda like our mildly retarded supply SGT whom one of our E7's told to 'take down that vehicle's antenna'....meaning to tie it down because we were mounting up and rolling out. 3 minutes later we drove by and his antenna was missing...and his engine running. He was ready to roll out. E7 asks, "SGT Johns, wtf happened to your antenna?" He says, "Awe hey Sarge, it's in the back. Hoo-ah?" We get out and sure as hell, it's in the back of the Hummer...cut wire and all. He used his Gerber to CUT THE COAX because the connector was on so tight. :twak: