[Ads-l] "Foxtrot" redux

[Ben Zimmer]

Relatedly, here's a Vietnam memoir describing an incident from 1968:

---
https://books.google.com/books?id=8qgaDgAAQBAJ&pg=PA395
_White Water Red Hot Lead: On Board U.S. Navy Swift Boats in Vietnam_
(2017) by Dan Daly, p. 395
My attempt at humor was based on the fact that I remembered that sometime
in his naval career Eldon [Thompson] had served on an aircraft carrier. In
response, I received Eldon's now famous "Whisky, Tango, Foxtrot, Oscar,"
response which loosely translated meant, "What the fuck, over?"
---

On Fri, Jul 8, 2022 at 2:30 AM Ben Zimmer <bgzimmer at gmail.com> wrote:

> When I posted about "WTF" on Language Log back in 2009 (when the 3rd
> edition of Jesse's "The F-Word" was published), some commenters brought up
> "Whiskey Tango Foxtrot."
>
> https://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=1766
>
> One regular LL commenter, Jim Gordon, shared this memory from serving in
> Vietnam:
>
> ---
> September 24, 2009 @ 7:56 pm
> JimG said,
> VietNam-era conversations (in-theater) sometimes included mock radio
> procedure using standard phonetics, coming out as "Whiskey Tango Foxtrot?,
> Over" = WTF,O and thus "Whiskey Tango Foxtrot, Oscar?" I and some of my
> old-fart contemporaries sometimes use it still, as an opening greeting as
> well as an expression of disbelief or lack of understanding. We also
> inserted the adjective form into out*standing, out*rageous and abso*lutely.
> ---
>
> --bgz
>
> 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
>>
>>

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