AIRMEN'S SLANG.

Mount Ida Chronicle, Volume XLV, Issue XLV, 7 September 1917, Page 1

AIRMEN'S SLANG.

c The great war has developed a tendency : to slang, and it is in the air service that | the new phrases are most freely coined. The [ airman—and. by the way, that is the , term by which they prefer to be _ de- . scribed." birdman, sky-pilot, and aviator • having' been cast into the" scrap-heap—- . never" speaks about .a "flight" now. Flip "is the word to use. A writer iw i London ' Answers ' says:

! " The late "Flight-lieutenant Harold ' Rosher, whose hook. 'ln the Royal Xaval Aii' Service. - ' is generally acknowledged to ' provide the most intimate and illuminating I ii.sight into the banian side of war-nyiug ' -yet'published, gives some choice examples 'of sky slang. There is " Spikebozzle."' for ' instance. Writing of an airplane chase after a Zeppelin, he remaaked : "TwomaI chines went up to spikebozzle him.' 5 Many learned professors of English might j have" given years-of'study and thought, and vet have failed to create a word so pecn- * "liarly expressive and meaningful as spike- ,. bozzle in connection with " Zepp-straffing," "Huffed," meaning got killed, is another x characteristic airman's word which -Lientenant Rosher* has given to the public at !' large, but he' omitted to mention the ;" phrase, " H-c hasn't come back for his " cap," which has the same melancholy sig- \ nificance. This phrase originated at a a ' certain big school for training naval airpilots. Before a man "took the air" it 0 was customary for him to bang his peaked v service-cap on one of a long line of pegs.. • When a pilot crashed, or had some other v unfortunate mishap, he did not, of course, come back for his cap, and hence the ori'i gili of the saying. A Another now common expression which >, came from the same school is ••'hickboo." L ._ Hickboo means a- good many things, bxit .. chiefly that enemy aircraft are about. If a Zeppelins or IVuibes are on their way, a 3 ' t hickboo is "on." Anything, in fact, which LV is calculated to put the wind up the timid j is a hickboo. The word is. really a distortion of an Indian'word, meaning an eagle.

The time-honored Americanism, "stunt," is the word most frequently used, and it is ■applied to looping-t3ie-loop another Yankee invention by the way—nose-driv-ing, darinr; banking, or landing in any new way. «' Stunts/' in fact, include everything that is original and risky- A flying machine is called a "bus" and small airships " bumps." In the naval air seryice all carpenters are "chippies"; a. flying oincer who has been promoted is-"said to have " shipped another stripe," while the guns used to down the aeroplanes are known as " archies."