R.A.F. VERNACULAR
By W. E. WOOSNAM-JONES
As might be expected, new words and phrases are constantly appearing. Many of them quickly gain enormous popularity and are then as quickly forgotten. A few years ago everything was "wizard." A first-rate party was a "wizard party," a first-rate pilot was a "wizard pilot." Today " wizard " is as obsolete as the crinoline. Such adjectives, implying super-excellence, are never very usual in the R.A.F., which usually prefers to employ the terms of understatement. If an irate commanding officer informs you that he "takes a pretty poor view" of some effort of yours, do not be deceived by the mildness of the phrase. It is as condemnatory as the most forceful language could be. "To take a dim view" is another variant, and to describe a fellow-officer as " dim " implies a "pretty poor view" of his intellect.
The airmen (A.C.2 Snooks and Co.) usually share the same slang as their pilots (P/O. Prune and Co.), but they have also evolved one or two words particularly their own. The best known of these is the useful word " gen " (with a soft "g "), meaning information straight from the horse's mouth. This word is usually supposed to be an abbreviation of "intelligence," although some maintain that it represents "genuine fact." Airmen spend a great deal of time and energy trying to obtain advance information about future moves and promotions, " gen " which usually turns out to be thoroughly inaccurate, and is thereupon disappointedly stigmatised as "duff gen." Another favourite adjective of the airman is "ropey," used to describe anything which is thoroughly unsatisfactory.
Picturesque phrases are common. "To tear somebody off a strip" is a most vivid way of describing a first-rate "dressing down," while the administration of a short, stinging official rebuke is admirably described as "giving somebody a raspberry." "To give somebody a strawberry "—implying a well-deserved pat on the back—achieved a fleeting popularity, but it has now sunk into desuetude, Possibly because the award of strawberries is very much rare' than that of the sister fruit.
The latest and most popular word at the moment is to "prang." This portmanteau verb; used at first to describe the successful planting of a bomb-load right on its objective, combines the viciousness of a prod with the satisfactory explosiveness of a bang. From successfully smashing up one's objective, it has now gone on to mean the literal or metaphorical smashing up of anything, from the demolition of one's own aircraft in a bad landing to the overwhelming of an adversary's feeble reasoning in a Mess argu- ment. In a few months' time "to prang" may be as obsolete as "to mash." At the moment its use is universal.
A popular importation from the American vaudeville stage is the word "stooge." The stooge is the member of a comedy team who asks all the foolish questions, receives all the humiliating rejoinders, and is subjected to all the outrageous insults. To refer to some- body as a " stooge " is therefore an amiable way of implying that his work is not quite as important as that of Mr. Winston Churchill, and to "stooge round" means to be drifting about doing nothing much in particular. A pilot will remark that he was stooging round at 3,000 waiting for the green, when he means that he was doing circuits of the landing-ground at 3,000 ft. waiting for the signal to come in and land. The word is old, but some of its uses are not.
Other American woris and phrases are coming into popular use by the R.A.F. as a result of their sharing aerodromes with American squadrons, just as the Americans tend to borrow phrases from us. To hear an English pilot remark that his "new ship climbs like a home-sick angel" is as odd in its way as it is to hear an American pilot refer to "a good show last night, but the natives were pretty '
Which brings one appropriately to the final comment, that behind all these light-hearted words and phrases lies the constant but never voiced realisation of the perilous task and the ultimate end which, in the Royal Air Force, may never lie farther away than just round the next corner. A hazardous duty or a desperate risk alike are casually described as "having no future "—surely the supreme example of under-statement characteristic of that Ser- vice which has gained for itself imperishable laurels.
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