chalk
n.— « The following information is placed on a 3×5 inch index card and handed to the pilot by the chalk leader. This serves as a contract between the pilot and the chalk of soldiers to ensure coordination of LZ data. In case the chalk lands in a different LZ, the pilot will write the grid of the new LZ and hand the 3×5 card back to the chalk leader before the soldiers exit the helicopter.» —by Dept. of Army 101st Airborne Division (Air Assault) Gold Book (Fort Campbell, Ky.) Feb. 4, 1999. (source: Double-Tongued Dictionary)
Further reading
In Cockney rhyming slang, apples and pears is a synonym for “stairs,” and dustbin lids means kids. Plus, sniglets are clever coinages for things we don’t already have words for. Any guesses what incogsneeto means? It’s the...
What if, instead of being an inanimate object, a dictionary were alive? That’s the idea behind a lavishly illustrated new children’s book called The Dictionary Story (Bookshop|Amazon) by Oliver Jeffers and Sam Winston. This is part of a...