wingman

Jonathan Lighter wuxxmupp2000 at YAHOO.COM
Sun Dec 2 22:12:14 UTC 2007


Does the slang sense appear in the movie? If so, I missed it. Or are actual wingmen "wingmen"?

  JL

Jesse Sheidlower <jester at PANIX.COM> wrote:
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Sender: American Dialect Society
Poster: Jesse Sheidlower
Subject: Re: wingman
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On Sun, Dec 02, 2007 at 07:16:04AM -0800, Dave Wilton wrote:
> >That's not quite the collegiate sense of "wingman" that I recall from
> >the late '80s / early '90s. This extended definition from
> >Urbandictionary seems more canonical:
>
> It is at least a few years older. It was current when I went to college in
> the early 80s (1981-85).

I'm pretty sure that it's the movie _Top Gun_ (1986) that made this
a widespread term.

Jesse Sheidlower
OED

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