shut up and color
v. phr.— «While the Air Force warmly embraced “Integrity First” and “Excellence in All We Do,” many Airmen in 1997 and today believe “Service Before Self” is just the Air Force telling you to “shut up and color” when you get your third deployment in three years, your cross training application gets denied, or you face any one of the other numerous personal hardships all military members face in our service to our nation.» —“Service Before Self: The unpopular core value” by Greg Reese MiG Alley FLyer (Osan Air Base, South Korea) Oct. 6, 2006. (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...