Query: "military brat" prior to 1981? (UNCLASSIFIED)

[Charles C Doyle]

And moving beyond "brat," we have (among the pious) PK's and MK's:  'preachers' kids' and 'missionaries' kids'.

--Charlie

________________________________________
From: American Dialect Society [ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU] on behalf of Michael McKernan [mckernan51 at GMAIL.COM]
Sent: Thursday, May 05, 2011 3:23 PM
To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU

Since 1962-1965, when I first became one myself, I've been aware that
children of (US) Foreign Service Officers have been self-referent as
"foreign service brats."  I believe this usage is still current, and common
among both fsbs and FSOs.  Seems likely to me that it followed "military
brat" rather than vice versa.  (At overseas posts, there were both fsbs and
mbs, since there was usually a US military "mission" connected with each
embassy.  Overall, mbs should greatly outnumber fsbs, since the US Foreign
Service has always been much smaller than the US military--which has also
had overseas and domestic bases much larger than any diplomatic outposts.)
I don't have a print citation for fsb from the 60s, but suppose that they
shouldn't be too hard to find, since as I remember it, the term was
well-established then.

Michael McKernan
Benson, Arizona

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