")
Certain of these neologisms are common enough in civilian life--have
been imported into the army since 1914--but others (and the more
interesting ones, as I hold) were, until the war, limited to the
barrack-room. British regiments which had been abroad used an argot of
considerable antiquity, some of it of Oriental origin (_e.g._ "blighty,"
meaning "home": hence "a blighty wound," or simply "a blighty," an
injury sufficiently serious to cause the victim to be invalided to
England). Whether the derivations of army slang have been investigated I
do not know. It appears to me to be a subject worth examination. I am
not myself a philologist, but in the bathrooms and elsewhere in the
hospital I have heard and noted a small collection of slang phrases and
idioms, and these may be worth recording. Such expressions as "swinging
the lead" (malingering or deceiving or acting in a hypocritical manner
or getting the better of anyone) have lost their novelty. So has
"rumbled," which means to be discovered or detected or found out. These
words have now spread far beyond the confines of the army.
Pages:
136
137
138
139
140
141
142
143
144
145
146
147
148
149
150
151
152
153
154
155
156
157
158
159
160