Af-Pak
n.— Note: Also AFPAK. «He is understood to have ordered military chiefs to build a revised strategy on the foundation that his first priority is stopping another terror attack against America from what is commonly referred to as the “Af-Pak region.”» —“President Obama to bolster troop surge with civilian officials in radical strategy for Afghanistan” by Tom Baldwin Times (London, England) Mar. 27, 2009. (source: Double-Tongued Dictionary)
Further reading
Loretta in Shreveport, Louisiana, wants to know what lexical and dialectal clues linguists look for when guessing where someone is from. She also wonders: Do people with long careers in the military or who grew up in a military family have a...
A hundred years ago, suffragists lobbied to win women the right to vote. Linguistically speaking, though, suffrage isn’t about “suffering.” It’s from a Latin word that involves voting. Plus: military cadences often include...