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

[Jonathan Lighter]

When I went back to look, I ran ont one those dreaded paywalls.

But not before I read that it's "painful" for modern soldiers to watch
Afghanistan war movies that use obsolete words like "chopper" and "GI."

Are these formerly indispensable words now considered "square," as today's
"cats and chicks" say?

JL

On Sat, Oct 3, 2020 at 5:32 AM Wilson Gray <hwgray at gmail.com> wrote:

> 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
>


-- 
"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