angel n. among American military medical personnel in Iraq, a soldier killed in combat. Editorial Note: It is probably a coincidence that Jose Angel Garibay was one of the first soldiers, if not the first, killed in Iraq after the American invasion of 2003. Soldiers serving in Iraq reported that this term is not common. (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...