[Ads-l] "Definitive glossary of modern U.S. military slang"

[Wilson Gray]

Interesting!

Of course, _gun_ has been around forever. _Ratf#@&_ reminds me of the
"SARF!" < _S[hitty-]A[assed]R[at-F[#@&]!_, an expression of random
annoyance, of my day. And the euphemism, _ratfink_. also comes to mind.
_Rumint_ should probably be spelled "RUMINT," like the standard
COMINT/Siver Section, ELINT/Blue Section, and SIGINT/Orange Section -
communications intelligence, electronics intelligence, and signals
intelligence - that preceded and inspired it. (Would you believe that these
three terms were once classified "top-secret/crypto," the highest
classification possible, back in the day? You could have knocked me over
with a feather, when, ca. 1964, Newsweek published a full-page article on
SIGINT. I was also annoyed by the fact that the article implied that SIGINT
was of greater significance than COMINT. Since I had been involved with
COMINT and had been taught that that was the most important of the three
INTs - after all, Silver Section consisted entirely of graduates of the
Army Language School - I took umbrage at the implication.) _Willie-Pete_ is
just a variant of V iet-Nam's "Willie-Peter."

On Fri, Oct 2, 2020 at 1:15 PM Jonathan Lighter <wuxxmupp2000 at gmail.com>
wrote:

> From the Denver Post, 2013.
>
>
> https://www.denverpost.com/2013/12/03/the-definitive-glossary-of-modern-us-military-slang/
>
> The usual assemblage from every possible register including (I'd say) the
> idiosyncratic.
>
> "Self-licking ice-cream cone" is worth considering.
>
> JL
> --
> "If the truth is half as bad as I think it is, you can't handle the truth."
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>


-- 
-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

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org