A Glossary of United States Air Force Slang

IKE OTHER TRADE AND PROFESSIONAL GROUPS, the pilots of the United States Air Force have developed a jargon. Some of the expressions they use are holdovers from the slang used in the armed forces during the Second World War, some are words and phrases borrowed from the languages of the various countries in which the fliers have served, especially Japan and Korea, and some are usages common to all branches of the service; however, most of them are humorous, flippant, and often obscene allusions to objects, conditions, and people met in the military flying profession. Many show the influence of radio standards of expression. I have lived for two years in an apartment area populated largely by U.S. Air Force personnel and their families, and have mingled socially with them. I found that the fliers continue to use their jargon, except for the more indelicate usages, at home, and apply it to everyday life. Their wives, children, and civilian friends pick up their expressions and use them in civilian circles, with the net effect that many of the terms are fast gaining wide currency. It is with these terms that we are primarily concerned; however, we must realize that in its own element, namely on the flight line, this slang is accompanied by a greater number of taboo words (except in radio communication). The following glossary was gathered from the everyday conversation of these pilots at home, and is offered as a representative sample of the present stage of development of the slang of the pilots of the U.S. Air Force. All the informants are pilots serving in the Strategic Air Command (SAC), stationed at Bergstrom Air Force Base at Austin, Texas. All have seen recent duty tours at bases all over the United States, Europe, and the Pacific; furthermore, they are now continually visiting other bases on routine training flights. Their consensus is that the terms presented here are current and common to all the Air Force. On Sunday, March 7, 1954, page 20 of the New York Times Magazine carried a list of forty-three of these expressions in an article by Norman H. Brown, entitled 'Jet Stream of Talk.' Most of those terms appear here also, but the informants who provided the terms listed here rejected the following nine as either not current or not common to all the Air Force: blast; brain box

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