[Ads-l] "Foxtrot" redux

[Laurence Horn]

Now widespread enough to serve as the title of a recent movie (
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt3553442/) and the name of a local eatery (
https://www.whiskeytangoct.com), although I guess in both cases there's
sort of a code involved for the cognoscenti.

LH

On Thu, Jul 7, 2022 at 11:28 PM Jesse Sheidlower <jester at panix.com> wrote:

> Exactly one month ago, Fred Shapiro posted about "foxtrot" as the name of
> a dance, leading to a discussion of the interpretation of the early
> examples.
>
> This got me wondering about a different Foxtrot, the capitalized version,
> as a radiocommunications spelling-alphabet term for the letter "F",
> representing the word "fuck" in phrases or compound words. There are a
> number of widespread examples of this, including "Charlie Foxtrot" for
> "clusterfuck" (Florida governor Ron DeSantis got some notice for using this
> in January of this year) and "Foxtrot Oscar" for "fuck off".
>
> The earliest I've been able to find is 1967, for "Romeo Foxtrot" for
> "ratfuck", in (of course) a military source.
>
> But I'm curious about these examples of "Whiskey Tango Foxtrot", from The
> Bomb of 1974, the yearbook of the Virginia Military Institute:
>
>
> https://archive.org/details/bomb1974virg/page/32/mode/2up?q=%22whiskey+tango+foxtrot%22
>
> (alt text of the first example: "A senior at last, Dave devotes full
> energy towards sleeping, drinking, and wenching. Dave bids farewell to
> VMI--WHISKEY TANGO FOXTROT, OUT!!")
>
> There are many later examples of "Whiskey Tango Foxtrot" meaning "What The
> Fuck", but I'm not sure what these 1974 ones mean. The earliest I know of
> for "WTF" as "what/who/etc. the fuck" is 1985 (though it's almost certainly
> earlier, but this is very hard to search). These VMI examples don't clearly
> mean "what the fuck", but no other interpretation jumps to mind either. Any
> thoughts?
>
> Jesse Sheidlower
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>

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