Embrace the Suck

MILSPEAK: Slang for military jargon, troop idioms, and Pentagonese. The perfect gift for anyone who is in the military, veterans, or who plans to serve.

Don’t be like a pig looking at a wristwatch.* With Milspeak, you’ll know just what our military men and women are talking about. Discover the meanings of such words as:

Airman alignment tool: Any tool that can be used to beat the shit out of someone.

Back to the taxpayers: Navy slang for where a wrecked aircraft gets sent.

Dome of obedience: Slang for a military helmet. Also called a brain bucket or Skid Lid.

Dummycord: A cord holding any sensitive (i.e., expensive or mission-critical) piece of gear to a soldier’s body.

Echelons above reality: Higher headquarters where no one has an idea about what is really happening.

Embrace the suck: The situation is bad, deal with it.

Johnny Jihad: Slang for a Muslim or a Muslim combatant.

NUB: Fake acronym for “non-useful being.” Indicates an unqualified individual. Likely originated in the U.S. Navy and was used to describe an unqualified watchstander.

Short-timer: Someone whose tour is almost over. See: single digit midget.

Squirter: Enemy fighter escaping or attempting to escape from a position under attack or from an ambush.

Voluntold: Derisive slang for “I was ordered to volunteer.”

Waxed: To get hit hard or get killed.

With more than 500 definitions Embrace the Suck is the perfect gift for the soldier, sailor, marine, or airman in your life—or for the Beltway Clerk** who yearns to speak like one.

*Slang for a dumbfounded look. (“Stop looking at that mop like a pig looking at a wristwatch, and clean the floor.”)

**Derisive term for a Washington political operative or civilian political hatchet man. May refer to so-called “Washington defense experts” who’ve never served in the armed forces.

Austin Bay is a retired colonel in the U.S. Army Reserve and coauthor of A Quick & Dirty Guide to War. He has written extensively on current military affairs, and has appeared on NPR's Morning Edition, Fox News, C-SPAN, MSNBC, CNBC, and Nightline. Bay writes a weekly international affairs column for Creators Syndicate, is a contributing editor at StrategyPage.com. He has written for The Wall Street Journal, The Weekly Standard, the New York Observer, and other publications. Bay served most recently with Headquarters, Multi-National Corps in Iraq in 2004. He was on active duty during Operation Desert Storm and served in Germany in the 1970's. A graduate of Rice University, he has a PhD from Columbia University. He lives in Austin, Texas.