Semantic drift: "khaki"

[Jonathan Lighter]

It's possible, Dave, but is the context right?  Is it just a slip?:

  2005 Larry Heinemann _Black Virgin Mountain_  (N.Y.: Doubleday) 13 [ref. to 1965-66]: In Louisville...Saturdays the hotel is packed with...GIs in ill-fitting dress khakis. _Ibid._ 47: That fall, at Fort Knox, my name comes down on the levy for Vietnam; I get orders and a month's home leave [to Chicago]; February.  The morning I am to leave for San Francisco...
  I am packed and tricked out in my dress khakis when [my brother] arrives at the door.

  I would never second-guess Heinemann on something like this, but the use of "khakis" struck me.

  And Scot, AFAIK,  when "khakis" refers to military uniforms,the ref. is always to the color, not the material.  The Navy and Marines still have some true "khakis."

  JL

Dave Wilton <dave at WILTON.NET> wrote:
  ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
Sender: American Dialect Society
Poster: Dave Wilton
Subject: Re: Semantic drift: "khaki"
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

IIRC, the US Army abandoned its tropical/summer khaki uniforms in the early
1980s, leaving only the olive-drab uniform. I would suspect that if the
meaning shifted it would be after this date, at least in American usage.

During the 60s and 70s there was a true US Army khaki uniform, which would
have been worn in tropical Vietnam. Perhaps Heinemann is referring to the
true khaki uniform and this is being misinterpreted.


-----Original Message-----
From: American Dialect Society [mailto:ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU] On Behalf Of
Michael Quinion
Sent: Saturday, September 15, 2007 10:43 AM
To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
Subject: Re: Semantic drift: "khaki"

Jonathan Lighter wrote:

> Just what color do people understand nowadays by "khaki"? All my life
I've
> subscribed to the def. of the OED: "dust-coloured; dull brownish yellow,
> drab," a kind of light to medium beige.
>
> Recently, though, I've noticed writers using "khaki" to designate the
> much darker brown, formerly used for U.S. Army uniforms (as in World
> War I) and usually designated "olive drab." Now I find Vietnam veteran
> Larry Heinemann (in _Black Virgin Mountain_) referring to the dark
> "olive-green" Army "service uniform" of the '60s as "khakis." Surely
> Heinemann knows better - or my memory is slipping.

I noticed this some years ago and indeed used it as the lead-in to a piece
about the slippery values of some colour names. See

http://www.worldwidewords.org/articles/colour.htm

As I say there, to me khaki is sandy-brown. This was the colour of British
Army uniforms in my extreme youth, just after WW2, when being "in khaki"
meant being in the Army. An olive-green colour is what today's fashion
writers mean by the word. It seems to have changed through the word being
retained for the colour of army uniforms while the colour of the uniforms
has changed.


--
Michael Quinion
Editor, World Wide Words
E-mail: wordseditor at worldwidewords.org
Web: http://www.worldwidewords.org

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