chalk
n.— «The evening before the flight I was informed, joy of joys, that I would be the movement commander for one plane load of soldiers (in military parlance a “chalk”).» —“Out Of Washington” by majorsamuel The Kosovo Kronichles Jan. 17, 2005. (source: Double-Tongued Dictionary)
Further reading
Cat hair may be something you brush off, but cat hair is also a slang term that means “money.” In the same way, cat beer isn’t alcoholic — some people use cat beer as a joking term for “milk.” And imagine walking on a...
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...