Military slang is an array of colloquial terminology used commonly by military personnel, including slang which is unique to or originates with the armed forces.[17]
· The Andrew/Grey Funnel Ferries - The Royal Navy, named for some important bloke or a Saint or something.
· Blighty - The UK, the name was taken from a province in India...
· Brag Rags - Medals.
· Cant-be-arrsed-itis -suffered mainly by those on exercise
· "Chin-strapped" - "chin-strap" - tired knackered
· Combat Suit - Jacket, trousers, and possibly hood, cap, etc., made from DPM material.
· Doss-bag - Army Issue Barnes-Wallace, Gonk-bag and Green Maggot.
· Dust - Washing powder.
· Gat - rifle (also Bunduk, or Bang-Stick) (mainly used by "Hats").
· Green/Bleeds green - a keen soldier, probably should watched suspiciously...from a long way away.
· NAAFI - "Navy, Army and Air Force Institutes". Quasi-civilian non-profit retaining such as tea, pies, cakes and sandwiches to the troops within garrisons worldwide. Pronounced 'NAFF-ee', it was created in 1921 to run recreational establishments for the Armed forces to sell goods to servicemen and their families. It runs clubs, bars, (EFI), which provides NAAFI facilities in war zones.
· Puttees - long strips of flannel cloth in shades of khaki, rifle green or black, wrapped tightly at the top of ankle-boots to provide support over rough ground (now CVHQ RA)
· Sangar - possibly derived from the Indian; usually a low wall with side wings built to give cover from fire in areas where digging is difficult or impossible.
· Sky Pilot - The Padre - he's got his head in the clouds talking to his boss.
· Stripey - Sergeant.
· Teeny-weeny Airways - The Army Air Corps.
· Warry (or War-y) - aggressive, militaristic; can be an insult.
· Webbing - cotton for belt as worn by the type of ladies I never get to meet, and several dodgy RM types down Union St.
There are more than a hundred words for "police" in different glossaries.. And this is by no means a unique case.[18]
Names taken from the coloring of police clothes or the coloring of police cars:blue boy, blue jeans, man-in-the-blue, salt and pepper, black and white, blue and white;A female police officer:girlie bear, honey bear, lady bear, mama bear, sugar bear,smokey beaver;A city policeman or rural police:citty kitty, country Joe, country mounty, little bear, local yokel;state police:boogey man, boy scouts, state bears, whatevers;barnies, bear, bearded bubby, big brother, bull, Dudley, do-right, Peter Rabbit;An unmarked or hidden police car:brown-paper bag, night crawler, pink panther, slick top, sneaky snake;A radar unit:shotgun, electric teeth, gunrunner, Kojak with a Kodak, smoke screenA police helicopter:bear in the air, eye in the sky, spy in the sky, tattle taleThere have found new expressions for an already established concept; such expressions that make them appear to be saying one thing while they are really communicating something very different to insiders.· ABH: Actual bodily harm
· D&D: Drunk And Disorderly
· DIP: Drunk In Public
· GBH: Grievous Bodily Harm
· TDA: Taking and Driving Away
· TWOC: Taken Without Owner's Consent
· ASNT: Area Searched No Trace
· FATAC: Fatal Road Traffic Accident
· MFH: Missing From Home
· NAI: Non-Accidental Injury
· RTA: Road-Traffic Accident
· ARV: Armed Response Vehicle
· TFU: Tactical Firearms Unit
· SOCO: Scenes Of Crime Officer; a forensic crime scene examiner
· VSS: Victim Support Scheme
· MISPER: Missing person
· POLAC: A collision involving a police vehicle
· WOFF: Write off; a vehicle or other property deemed a total loss for insurance purposes
· WINQ: Warrant inquiry
e) Money slang
While the origins of these slang terms are many and various, certainly a lot of English money slang is rooted in various London communities, which for different reasons liked to use language only known in their own circles, notably wholesale markets, street traders, crime and the underworld, the docks, taxi-cab driving, and the immigrant communities. London has for centuries been extremely cosmopolitan, both as a travel hub and a place for foreign people to live and work and start their own businesses. This contributed to the development of some 'lingua franca' expressions, i.e., mixtures of Italian, Greek, Arabic, Yiddish (Jewish European/Hebrew dialect), Spanish and English which developed to enable understanding between people of different nationalities, rather like a pidgin or hybrid English. Certain lingua franca blended with 'parlyaree' or 'polari', which is basically underworld slang.
Backslang also contributes several slang money words. Backslang reverses the phonetic (sound of the) word, not the spelling, which can produce some strange interpretations, and was popular among market traders, butchers and greengrocers.
Here are the most common and/or interesting British slang money words and expressions, with meanings, and origins where known. Many are now obsolete; typically words which relate to pre-decimalisation coins, although some have re-emerged and continue to do so.
Some non-slang words are included where their origins are particularly interesting, as are some interesting slang money expressions which originated in other parts of the world, and which are now entering the English language.[19]
Here are some examples of money slang words:
archer = two thousand pounds (£2,000), late 20th century, from the Jeffrey Archer court case in which he was alleged to have bribed call-girl Monica Coughlan with this amount.
ayrton senna/ayrton = tenner (ten pounds, £10) - cockney rhyming slang created in the 1980s or early 90s, from the name of the peerless Brazilian world champion Formula One racing driver, Ayrton Senna (1960-94), who won world titles in 1988, 90 and 91, before his tragic death at San Marino in 1994.
bag/bag of sand = grand = one thousand pounds (£1,000), seemingly recent cockney rhyming slang, in use from around the mid-1990s in Greater London; perhaps more widely too.
bar = a pound, from the late 1800s, and earlier a sovereign, probably from Romany gypsy 'bauro' meaning heavy or big, and also influenced by allusion to the iron bars use as trading currency used with Africans, plus a possible reference to the custom of casting of precious metal in bars.
bender = sixpence (6d) Another slang term with origins in the 1800s when the coins were actually solid silver, from the practice of testing authenticity by biting and bending the coin, which would being made of near-pure silver have been softer than the fakes.
bees (bees and honey) = money. Cockney rhyming slang from the late 1800s. Also shortened to beesum (from bees and, bees 'n', to beesum).
big ben - ten pounds (£10) the sum, and a ten pound note - cockney rhyming slang.
boodle = money.
bunce = money, usually unexpected gain and extra to an agreed or predicted payment, typically not realised by the payer.
cabbage = money in banknotes,
carpet = three pounds (£3) or three hundred pounds (£300), or sometimes thirty pounds (£30). This has confusing and convoluted origins, from as early as the late 1800s: It seems originally to have been a slang term for a three month prison sentence, based on the following: that 'carpet bag' was cockney rhyming slang for a 'drag', which was generally used to describe a three month sentence; also that in the prison workshops it supposedly took ninety days to produce a certain regulation-size piece of carpet; and there is also a belief that prisoners used to be awarded the luxury of a piece of carpet for their cell after three year's incarceration. The term has since the early 1900s been used by bookmakers and horse-racing, where carpet refers to odds of three-to-one, and in car dealing, where it refers to an amount of £300.
chip = a shilling (1/-) and earlier, mid-late 1800s a pound or a sovereign. According to Cassells chip meaning a shilling is from horse-racing and betting. The association with a gambling chip is logical. Chip and chipping also have more general associations with money and particularly money-related crime, where the derivations become blurred with other underworld meanings of chip relating to sex and women (perhaps from the French 'chipie' meaning a vivacious woman) and narcotics (in which chip refers to diluting or skimming from a consignment, as in chipping off a small piece - of the drug or the profit).
clod = a penny (1d). Clod was also used for other old copper coins. From cockney rhyming slang clodhopper (= copper).
coal = a penny (1d). Also referred to money generally, from the late 1600s, when the slang was based simply on a metaphor of coal being an essential commodity for life. The spelling cole was also used.
cock and hen = ten pounds. The ten pound meaning of cock and hen is 20th century rhyming slang. Cock and hen - also cockerel and hen - has carried the rhyming slang meaning for the number ten for longer. Its transfer to ten pounds logically grew more popular through the inflationary 1900s as the ten pound amount and banknote became more common currency in people's wages and wallets, and therefore language. Cock and hen also gave raise to the variations cockeren, cockeren and hen, hen, and the natural rhyming slang short version, cock - all meaning ten pounds.
commodore = fifteen pounds (£15). The origin is almost certainly London, and the clever and amusing derivation reflects the wit of Londoners: Cockney rhyming slang for five pounds is a 'lady', (from Lady Godiva = fiver); fifteen pounds is three-times five pounds (3x£5=£15); 'Three Times a Lady' is a song recorded by the group The Commodores; and there you have it: Three Times a Lady = fifteen pounds = a commodore. (Thanks Simon Ladd, Jun 2007)
cows = a pound, 1930s, from the rhyming slang 'cow's licker' = nicker (nicker means a pound). The word cows means a single pound since technically the word is cow's, from cow's licker.
deep sea diver = fiver (£5), heard in use Oxfordshire late 1990s, this is rhyming slang dating from the 1940s.
dosh = slang for a reasonable amount of spending money, for instance enough for a 'night-out'. Almost certainly and logically derived from the slang 'doss-house', meaning a very cheap hostel or room, from Elizabethan England when 'doss' was a straw bed, from 'dossel' meaning bundle of straw, in turn from the French 'dossier' meaning bundle.
dough = money. From the cockney rhyming slang and metaphoric use of 'bread'.
dunop/doonup = pound, backslang from the mid-1800s, in which the slang is created from a reversal of the word sound, rather than the spelling, hence the loose correlation to the source word.
flag = five pound note (£5), UK, notably in Manchester.The word flag has been used since the 1500s as a slang expression for various types of money, and more recently for certain notes. Originally (16th-19thC) the slang word flag was used for an English fourpenny groat coin, derived possibly from Middle Low German word 'Vleger' meaning a coin worth 'more than a Bremer groat' (Cassells).
flim/flimsy = five pounds (£5), early 1900s, so called because of the thin and flimsy paper on which five pound notes of the time were printed.
folding/folding stuff/folding money/folding green = banknotes, especially to differentiate or emphasise an amount of money as would be impractical to carry or pay in coins, typically for a night out or to settle a bill. Folding, folding stuff and folding money are all popular slang in London.
foont/funt = a pound (£1), from the mid-1900s, derived from the German word 'pfund' for the UK pound.
french/french loaf = four pounds, most likely from the second half of the 1900s, cockney rhyming slang for rofe (french loaf = rofe), which is backslang for four, also meaning four pounds. Easy when you know how..
garden/garden gate = eight pounds (£8), cockney rhyming slang for eight, naturally extended to eight pounds. In spoken use 'a garden' is eight pounds. Incidentally garden gate is also rhyming slang for magistrate, and the plural garden gates is rhyming slang for rates. The word garden features strongly in London, in famous place names such as Hatton Garden, the diamond quarter in the central City of London, and Covent Garden, the site of the old vegetable market in West London, and also the term appears in sexual euphemisms, such as 'sitting in the garden with the gate unlocked', which refers to a careless pregnancy.
generalise/generalize = a shilling (1/-), from the mid 1800s, thought to be backslang. Also meant to lend a shilling, apparently used by the middle classes, presumably to avoid embarrassment. Given that backslang is based on phonetic word sound not spelling, the conversion of shilling to generalize is just about understandable, if somewhat tenuous, and in the absence of other explanation is the only known possible derivation of this odd slang.
gen net/net gen = ten shillings (1/-), backslang from the 1800s (from 'ten gen').
grand = a thousand pounds (£1,000 or $1,000) Not pluralised in full form. Shortened to 'G' (usually plural form also) or less commonly 'G's'. Originated in the USA in the 1920s, logically an association with the literal meaning - full or large.
greens = money, usually old-style green coloured pound notes, but actully applying to all money or cash-earnings since the slang derives from the cockney rhyming slang: 'greengages' (= wages).
2.3 Phonetic peculiarities of slang
While many slang words introduce new concepts, some of the most effective slang provides new expressions--fresh, satirical, shocking--for established concepts, often very respectable ones. Sound is sometimes used as a basis for this type of slang, as, for example, in various phonetic distortions (e.g., pig Latin terms). It is also used in rhyming slang, which employs a fortunate combination of both sound and imagery. Thus, gloves are "turtledoves" (the gloved hands suggesting a pair of billing doves), a girl is a "twist and twirl" (the movement suggesting a girl walking), and an insulting imitation of flatus, produced by blowing air between the tip of the protruded tongue and the upper lip, is the "raspberry," cut back from "raspberry tart." Most slang, however, depends upon incongruity of imagery, conveyed by the lively connotations of a novel term applied to an established concept. Slang is not all of equal quality, a considerable body of it reflecting a simple need to find new terms for common ones, such as the hands, feet, head, and other parts of the body. Food, drink, and sex also involve extensive slang vocabulary. Strained or synthetically invented slang lacks verve, as can be seen in the desperate efforts of some sportswriters to avoid mentioning the word baseball--e.g., a batter does not hit a baseball but rather "swats the horsehide," "plasters the pill," "hefts the old apple over the fence," and so on.[20]
If we try to characterize rhyming slang in particular, we can find such phonetic features:
1.Monophthongization
This affects the lexical set mouth vowel. Wells believes that it is widely agreed that the "mouth" vowel is a "touchstone for distinguishing between "true Cockney" and popular London" and other more standard accents. Cockney usage would include monophthongization of the word.