“ MIT-FLIPPIHG”

Evening Star, Issue 23907, 10 June 1941, Page 6

“ MIT-FLIPPIHG”

AMERICANS COIN NEW WORDS One valuable piece of testimony to the fact that the United States’ 530,000 young men nqw engaged in serious military training are taking to their work in good spirits lies in the glossary of slang terms they have invented. These are words and phrases coined at the army camps where regular service men, members of the National Guard divisions, and “ conscripts ” selected under the first peacetime compulsory training law in the United States* history are at work. Only one-third of the contemplated army is now in training. By July of this year, according to the present schedule, the ranks will have risen to 1,400,000 men._ Even an American expert on contemporary slang would be lost in the army camps without a special dictionary. In keeping with tradition the new jargon is cynical, contemptuous of authority and sentimentalism, and hard on symbols of patriotism or heroism. Yet its good humour, com.bined with lively inventiveness, indicates that army spirits are high. “Blame Hitler” is the answer to all complaints of every variety. “ The old man in the poodle palace is the commanding general in his headquarters. “ Mit-flipping ” (from the Slang “ mit ” for hand) describes a soldier who. tries to win the favour of his superior officer by saluting on every possible occasion. And “ mud flats ” is the general term to designate the army camp.-

An elaborate series of terms are used to designate the wide variations in rank and experience of the personnel. Regular enlisted men are called "goons,” while the new recruits are “ jeeps ” and “ yard birds,” whose barracks are “ Jeeipvillo ” or " Skunk Hollow.’

A first sergeant is the “ top kick,” or possibly " the vulture,” and usually has some personal pet name such as “ parrot-nose,” “ flannel-mouth,” or “ stinky.” The innovation of female hostesses at the army camps to take charge of social activities, dances, and recreational entertainment, has inspired the phrase “ love louie,” because the hostesses’ rank is comparable to that of lieutenant, commonly known as “ the louie.”