Bad Girls Ride Again PLUS hooyay; cragly

[Jonathan Lighter]

I

"The body shots are really startin' to kick in!"

Wikipedia and Urban Dictionary (from 2003) explain that these are shots of
tequila or a similar beverage, lapped/licked from another person's navel,
breasts, or anywhere else on their body.

As part of public jollification, of course, as in fashionable dance
clubs. "Belly shots," naturally, are restricted to the navel.

II

According to CNN, Gen. Petraeus included the following in his Veterans' Day
greeting to American "service members"

 http://edition.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/1011/11/cnr.02.html

GEN. DAVID PETRAEUS, COMMANDER, U.S. FORCES, AFGHANISTAN: Well, on this
Veterans Day, let me just say hoowa, hoorah, hooya, and air power.


What he actually said (aside from "air power") is better spelled as "hooah,"
"oorah," and "hooyay."  Wikipedia spells the latter Navy version as
"hooyah," but that's not what Petraeus said. He clearly said "hooyay." (It's
brand-new to me.)

Also according to Wikipedia, the USAF doen't shout "Air power!" (Possibly
too corny.)  It shouts "HUA" ("Heard-Understood-Acknowledged," obviously.)
But maybe that's just Wiki-Wacki.

Meanwhile, the evidently baseless etymologies of "hooah" continue to
multiply. A new one is that it come from the Vietnamese "word for
yes."  This sounds like BS to me. Does anyone here know enough Vietnamese to
confirm or deny the possibility?

III
On the eagerly awaited premiere of _Sarah Palin's Alaska_, the vivacious,
half-term governorette described a mountain as high and "cragly."  I find a
number of Google Hits, mostly spelled with two g's.


JL

--
"If the truth is half as bad as I think it is, you can't handle the truth."

--
"If the truth is half as bad as I think it is, you can't handle the truth."

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