Navy Expression “Turn To”

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My name is Sheldon Hubbard and I’m calling from Dallas, Texas.

Well, hello Sheldon and welcome to the show.

Oh, thanks a bunch.

I had a question about the phrase turn to, as in to get to work. We used it an awful lot when I was in the Navy.

Aha.

I was always wondering where that had come from.

How did you use that?

It was always accompanied by some fingers being pointed at and in the turning motion, as if they were a screwdriver of some sort.

Like you’re holding an invisible doorknob or something?

Your two fingers pointed to the person that needs to get to work, and then they were turning like you were turning an invisible doorknob, absolutely.

And tell us about the context in which you’d hear this in the Navy.

Normally a chief would be walking by or your superior and see you doing the wrong thing or doing nothing when you need to be swaddling a deck or something, just idle hands being seen.

And maybe an English background, I always thought.

So would the officer say turn to or just make the gesture?

It would be either or. Sometimes they just look at you and kind of give you the gesture.

And you know you’ve got to get to work.

I find a lot of uses of this in military books and papers and stories about people’s time in the service and in a few glossaries here and there.

But it’s so basic a phrase that nobody bothers to even explain it.

Does that make sense?

That people feel like it’s so ordinary that it’s not even really worth their attention trying to explain.

Right.

You just learn it and you get to work right away on the ship, right?

Yeah.

You don’t ask an awful lot of questions.

In the Navy, right.

As far as I know, the original sense was turn to T-O, like set to or go to, meaning let’s do it or turn to your work.

The idea in all those phrases is sort of focusing your attention.

And I think that the finger motion is probably a visual pun.

Don’t you think? Turn two?

Oh, yeah, yeah. Two fingers pointed at you.

Yeah, I mean, the only other possible explanation I’ve seen about this is that maybe people were making that gesture because it’s so noisy on ships.

Oh, yeah. Wow, hey, that’s a great idea.

That makes a lot of sense, actually, doesn’t it?

Absolutely.

Yeah, it’s sort of just a little gesture to get you back to work.

Yeah, you guys are awesome.

Oh, we try.

Thank you.

Well, I tell you what, you know, we have a lot of listeners here in San Diego in the Navy, of course.

Oh, that’s right.

We always love drawing on their expertise, so we’d love to hear from you no matter where you are, if you’ve been in the Navy and have something to say about this.

Sheldon, thank you so much for your call.

Thank you guys very much. I love your show.

Thank you.

Thanks, take care.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

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