Slanguage of the Services

Arawa Guerilla, Issue 11, 1 February 1943, Page 15

Slanguage of the Services

f THE ARMY

War . always does things to language. It enriches colloquial speech, breeds vivid , slang, and creates new words to fit new situations and materials. This war has been particularly fruitful in slang terms, most of them quite original and not borrowed from America as was the English custom before the war.

A nation which borrows its colloquial vocabulary from the films would seen) to display a lack of inventiveness, but this has not been borne out by the English war “slanguage.” The awkwardness which accompanied the adaptation of (American slang, terms is not found in the new creations, which are authentic, and like all true slang, picturesque and pithily expressive.

The Army Way

Curiously enough, a great number of the slang terms used by Air Force personnel in New Zealand are Army in origin.. Such R.N.Z.A.F. expressions as “browned off” or “brassed off” (this is uncommon here) for “fed up,” and “erk” for “rookie” hardly ever heard in the Army here, are yet common in the British Army. Possibly this is due to the closer contacts which the R.N.ZA.F has made with England itself and the consequent ease of transmission.

The British Tommy, especially the Cockney, has always been celebrated for his quick wit and linguistic inventiveness. To-day the Cockney rhyming slang, so popular in the last war, is almost dead, although one still hears it at times from the lips of veterans. But the rather childish “Pollyanna” for “piano,” “apples and pears” for “stairs,” “plates of meat” for “feet,” and so on, seems to have given way to terser, more streamlined slang. Some British Terms.

A great number of the, British terms are still not in use here. For

instance, if a thing is bad it is always “ropey,” thus a “ropey job” is the usual term for an uncollaborative blonde. Instead of being fine-and-dandy, things which are good are “wizard.” When everything is under control, it is all “buttoned up.” But if it goes wrong, things are “cheesed.” Anything which turns out badly is “a bad show,” or a “black.” But “rookies” still go “on the mat” and get a “session in the cooler.”

Home-grown Varieties.

The New Zealand Army has its favourites amongst slang terms and many of them are not only vivid, but have interesting histories. For instance, “to be rotated” which means to be plunged into a state of confusion, appears not to derive, as many think, from the air, but from the fact that when.the flanges of a tank become loaded with sand, it tends to spin the vehicle to one side, cause a sharp “rotation.” The Australian term, “choco,” a good-natured term of contempt used by overseas men for the territorial forces, which is now widely current in New Zealand, has a definitely literary origin. It is short for “chocolate soldier,” and derives from Bluntschli, the character in Bernard Shaw’s “Arms and the Man” 'who carried chocolate in his bandolier instead of cartridges. The irony of the expression is, however, that in Shaw’s play, Bluntschli is the only practical man of the lot, and the other soldiers are a pack of fanciful nincompoops. Perhaps the. most popular word of all is “to bludge” and “bludger.” Originally “bludger” was a noun meaning apparently a pimp or a prostitute’s tout, but in the Army it came to be a verb meaning “to scrounge” or to make use of your fellow’s possessions, and to avoid paying for anything. However, by extension, in a very short time it has come in the form

of “bludger” to mean a malinger, a dodger, a lazy fellow, a borrower; in fact, almost any possible variety of anti-social creature. It is an interesting example of a single word doing duty for numerous others, and is at present undiminished in popularity. Genius in Slang. Other vivid expressions are, apart from the obvious popular obscenities, “doing the scone,” the origin of which is very obscure, although possibly connected with “doing the block,” both of which mean both losing one’s temper and losing one’s grip; also “that’ll be the day,” and its numerous variants, “that’ll be the bright and sunny day,” “that’ll be the bright and sunny,” “that’ll be the sunny Sunday,” etc., all attempts to vary the monotony of the grossly overworked original. Said contemptuously, its meaning is obvious. But real genius is manifest in three familiar phrases, which for appropriateness and cogency rival the very best of Elizabethan - and American slang. These are “bull-ring” for “parade-ground” and what a vision of sweat, dust, and slaughter it conjures up; “emu parade” for an organised sanitary scavenge (this is a masterpiece) and “Maori P.T.”for a stolen siesta. The unsung inventors of these expressions must take their place beside the men who thought of “lunatic fringe,” “take it on the lam,” and “Waltzing Matilda.” Next Month: AIR FORCE SLANG.