With today's all-volunteer armed forces, we can forget how common military service once was. In the 20th century, it wasn't odd to have half the houses in your neighborhood occupied by a veteran and his family. The language they brought back from the service could be colorful, but even when it wasn't, these veterans retained a lot of jargon that their compatriots would understand, and soon those terms were used by everyone. We know what these terms mean, but we don't know how they came about. How accurate these stories are, I can't tell you. Commenters at YouTube are especially upset about "balls to the wall," which they contend predates aviation.
Saturday, July 27, 2024
Common Terms We Got from the Military
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1 comment:
Yeah, Balls to the Wall goes back the early engine governors.
One (of many) they missed is Freeze the Balls off a Brass Monkey.
On Navy ships the wanted the cannon balls stacked next to gun in a pyramid shaped pile starting with a 6 x 6 grid on the bottom row.
But on a ship that's moving with a hard wooden deck they would roll away. The solution was a tray with 36 hollows to hold the balls securely. Being an attached fitting on a Navy ship they were made of brass, the Brass Monkey.
Brass and the iron balls have very different coefficient of expansion/contraction, so when it got very cold the brass would shrink enough for the iron balls to fall off.
Just one more tidbit to cram your brain so you'll walk into a room and not remember why.
xoxoxoBruce
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