Military slang

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Military slang is an array of colloquial terminology used commonly by military personnel, including slang which is unique to or originates with the armed forces. In English-speaking countries, it often takes the form of abbreviations/acronyms or derivations of the NATO Phonetic Alphabet, or otherwise incorporates aspects of formal military terms and concepts. Military slang is often used to reinforce or reflect (usually friendly and humorous) interservice rivalries.

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Acronym slang in the U.S. Military

A number of military slang terms are acronyms. Rick Atkinson ascribes the origin of SNAFU (Situation Normal, All Fucked Up), FUBAR (Fucked Up Beyond Any Repair or "All Recognition"), and a bevy of other terms to cynical GIs ridiculing the United States Army's penchant for acronyms. [1]

Terms then end up being used in other industries as these GIs complete their services. For example, FUBAR evolved into Foobar as GIs coming home from World War II matriculated into Massachusetts Institute of Technology, with the first written use from a club at MIT called the Tech Model Railroad Club. [2]

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Related Research Articles

The terms foobar, foo, bar, baz, and others are used as metasyntactic variables and placeholder names in computer programming or computer-related documentation. They have been used to name entities such as variables, functions, and commands whose exact identity is unimportant and serve only to demonstrate a concept.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Internet slang</span> Slang languages used by different people on the Internet

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">SNAFU</span> Military acronym

SNAFU is an acronym that is widely used to stand for the sarcastic expression Situation normal: all fucked up. It is a well-known example of military acronym slang. It is sometimes bowdlerized to "all fouled up" or similar. It means that the situation is bad, but that this is a normal state of affairs. The acronym is believed to have originated in the United States Marine Corps during World War II.

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">LOL</span> Internet slang

LOL, or lol, is an initialism for laughing out loud and a popular element of Internet slang. It was first used almost exclusively on Usenet, but has since become widespread in other forms of computer-mediated communication and even face-to-face communication. It is one of many initialisms for expressing bodily reactions, in particular laughter, as text, including initialisms for more emphatic expressions of laughter such as LMAO and ROFL or ROTFL. Other unrelated expansions include the now mostly obsolete "lots of luck" or "lots of love" used in letter-writing.

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Fucked up may refer to:

FUBAR is a military acronym for "fucked up beyond all repair". See List of military slang terms § FUBAR.

Military terminology refers to the terms and language of military organizations and personnel as belonging to a discrete category. As distinguishable by their usage in military doctrine, they serve to depoliticise, dehumanise, or otherwise abstract discussion about its operations from an actual description thereof.

Digger slang, also known as ANZAC slang or Australian military slang, is Australian English slang as employed by the various Australian armed forces throughout the 20th and 21st centuries. There have been four major sources of the slang: the First World War, the Second World War, the Korean War and the Vietnam War. The name Digger slang derives from the cultural stereotype of the Digger in the First World War. Graham Seal AM, Professor of Folklore at Curtin University of Technology, calls the slang Diggerese. It is a combination of an occupational jargon and an in-group argot.

MILF is an acronym that stands for "Mother I'd Like to Fuck". This abbreviation is used in colloquial English, instead of the whole phrase. It connotes a sexually attractive older woman, typically one who has children. The phrase's usage has gone from relatively obscure to mainstream in the media and entertainment. A related term is "cougar", which suggests an older woman in active pursuit of younger men.

The US DoD Modeling and Simulation Glossary, was originally created in 1998. As of October 2010 the glossary was being updated, without changing its main objective of providing a uniform language for use by the M&S community. This article contains a list of terms and acronyms, based on the original DoD 5000.59-M and information related to the update.

References

  1. Atkinson, Rick (2007). The Day of Battle: The War in Sicily and Italy, 1943–1944 . The Liberation Trilogy. Henry Holt. p.  36. ISBN   978-0-8050-6289-2.
  2. "Computer Dictionary Online"., computer-dictionary-online.org

Further reading