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...
duty watch bar n.— «For members of the British Royal Navy on the two warships at the pier, it became something more than just a bar last week. “It’s the ’duty watch bar,’ ” Mark Smith, 41, a petty officer sitting in Montero’s on Sunday, said with a...
