five and fly

five and fly
 n.— «Hamm, of the Air Force Academy, countered that the attitude of quitting after the required five years—known as “five and fly”—was “a minority view.…One of the reasons for the exodus now is the airlines’ hiring.”» —“Academies hid expenses, audit reveals” by Keith C. Epstein in Washington, D.C. Plain Dealer (Cleveland, Ohio) Apr. 5, 1990. (source: Double-Tongued Dictionary)

Join the discussion

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

Further reading

Standing up at a Wedding Means More Than Being Vertical

Matt from Grand Rapids, Michigan, was puzzled when colleagues kept saying someone had stood up at a wedding, indicating that they’d been a member of the wedding party. The expression stood up in that sense is an Americanism going back about two...