Book on Vietnam War Slang

Wilson Gray hwgray at GMAIL.COM
Sun Aug 24 22:32:22 UTC 2014


On Sun, Aug 24, 2014 at 2:56 PM, Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at yale.edu>
 quoted:

> FIGMO


Not at *all* peculiar to the Vietnam-War era. FIGMO and "cop a squat" are
contemporary, in my experience, in the sense that I learned them both from
one older, Army-vet friend, ca. 1953, very possibly in the same
conversation. (I was already familiar with SNAFU and FUBAR, of course.)
 Before the draft was done away with, damned near "every swinging dick" in
the country had occasion to get "nervous in the service." I even knew black
*marines*, when they were as rare as black MD's, instead of figuring
prominently in recruitment ads.


-- 
-Wilson
-----
All say, "How hard it is that we have to die!"---a strange complaint to
come from the mouths of people who have had to live.
-Mark Twain

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