![]() ![]() This term was uttered either as an acronym (A-wall) or spelled out as an initialism. (Glossary 1941)ĪWOL - An unauthorized absence, standing for "absent without leave". Once Americans got into combat the slang will get a bit darker but still remain essentially playful.Īndy Gump -A person with a small chin and prominent nose, from the cartoon character of the same name.Īrmoured heifer - Condensed milk, because it came in a metal can.Īrmy lids - Radio operators, so called because they "talk through their hats." (As reported in Newsweek, March 10, 1941) In the common slang of the era, a hat was called a lid.Īrmy strawberries - Prunes. One can easily see that the terms dwell on everyday life in a peacetime army with much devoted to glib nicknames for food and Army discipline. Here then is a lexicon of the slang that was in place at the time of the attack on Pearl Harbor. SOL in Kendell's dictionary stands for "sure out of luck" when everyone in uniform knew it meant "shit out of luck." Given the sensibilities of the time, these published works shied away from scatology and obscenity. ![]() Probably the most popular of these was the glossary embedded in Park Kendall's Gone with the Draft-Love Letters of a Trainee published by Grosset & Dunlap in tk 1941. The article, entitled "The Talk of the Troops," opened with the line, "Just at the very minute when you turn from state highway in between the Garrison dates, you enter a different world, a world of more orderly life, a world of more honest living, and also a world of different language, new and strange to civilian folk." īefore Pearl Harbor, commercial publishers and printers were offering dictionaries of military and several books on the draft contained extensive glossaries. An army officer who had collected army slang for many years published his first article on the talk of the new draftee army in July, 1941, in Our Army magazine. Įlbridge Colby, a summa cum laude graduate Columbia University, was the most important early collector of Army Slang. During the period in which the 1941 maneuvers were in full swing, the Army issued a series of press releases entitled "BEHIND THE HEADLINES IN OUR ARMY", which carried updates on new slang. "The latest word to come out of Army maneuvers in Tennessee is 'Bivouacky'", proclaimed an Army press release which defined the term: "'Bivouacky' in blitzlanguage means slap-happy or punch-drunk from being in the field or in bivouac too long."Īdditionally, a "Glossary of Army Slang" had been distributed by the Public Relations Division of the US Army in the summer of 1941, much of which was reprinted in Fall, 1941 issue of the journal American Speech. The slang tended to be irreverent and relevant. ![]() One of the byproducts of the Tennessee maneuvers was a recognition that army slang was evolving in the field, which was seen as a sign of strong morale among the troops. The original list contained only 44 terms, which are marked in the glossary which follows with the notation "Soldiers Handbook". The glossary served as the baseline for the rich body of slang and terminology which developed during the course of the war. That is pure speculation, but proof that the Army itself was sowing the seeds for a new brand of war slang was not.īeginning on December 11, 1940, all new recruits and draftees were issued a slim paperback entitled Basic Field Manual – Soldiers Handbook, which contained a GLOSSARY OF COMMON MILITARY EXPRESSIONS. The Army might have done this to create a sense of community and shared good humor among a large male cohort, many of whom would just as soon have not been in uniform. The Army of 1940-1 actively encouraged the use of slang among the newly enlisted, and conscripted. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Name Society, December 28, 1974, in New York City. Lighter, University of Tennessee, Knoxville. –From "Dogfaces and Dog Soldiers" by Jonathan E. ![]() World War II may be remembered for a number of reasons, and probably the least of these is that it provided a king‑size fund of new slang for the diversion of lexicographers. ![]()
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