We spoke earlier about cumshaw artists, or people who get things done by crafty stealing or bartering. Alan Johnson from Plano, Texas, told us a story from his Air Force days in Vietnam, when he and some comrades stole a bunch of plywood by sneaking...
Amanda in La Mesa, California, wonders why her roommate didn’t recognize scuttlebutt, meaning gossip. The word comes from nautical use, where a scuttlebutt was a cask of drinking water, a butt, with a hole cut in it, from scuttle, to cut a hole...
In the Navy and the Marines, if someone goes hermantile, they’re angry, shouting, and unpredictable. This slang expression is of uncertain origin. It goes back to World War I but has stayed almost exclusively within the military’s lexicon and...
Who is Yehudi, and what exactly does he do? In the 1930s on Bob Hope’s radio show there was a musical guest named Yehudi Menuhin. His name proved so catchy, along with sidekick Jerry Colonna’s joking phrase, “Who’s Yehudi?” that it entered the...
Ryan at Camp Pendleton, a Marine who has served aboard Navy vessels, wonders why Navy noncommissioned leaders are called petty officers when their work is anything but petty. Here petty is the rank-and-size sense inherited from French petit, small...
An officer from Camp Pendleton is curious about gyrene, a slang term for “Marine.” Grant says it may derive from the Greek word for “tadpole.” This is part of a complete episode. Transcript of “Gyrene” Hello, you have A Way with Words. Yeah, this is...
