The American military has its own language that often leaves those who haven’t served asking a question:
What did they just say?
Now, there’s a new dictionary to help translate “military speak.”
The Military Slang Dictionary, the latest endeavor by VETTV, is set to drop May 26, said its CEO John Acevedo, a Marine veteran.
“Over the past few years, I realized we have our own language,” he said.
That led VETTV to put out a call to action on its social media a couple of years ago that asked its followers for their favorite military slang.
“We got thousands of responses,” he said.
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The words were then put into a spreadsheet and the work of writing definitions began.
“It was going to be just a resource for our writing team to help the juices flow as they developed their TV shows,” explained Acevedo.
Acevedo then hit on an idea to produce a coffee table book of the slang terms perfect for military households, hospitals, and barracks rooms.
“We’ve got some really iconic ones in there like donkey dick (fuel nozzle),” he said. “Ratf[---] is another fun one.”
MREs are said to be ratf[---]ed when someone takes all the best tasting food items out of them.
In all, the dictionary has 2,500 inside and 100 images from an artist.
“It spans all branches,” Acevedo said.
Billing itself as “NetFlix for veterans,” VETTV was founded in 2016 by Marine Lt. Donny O’Malley.
“He was trying to capture the funny stories that happen when you’re deployed,” Acevedo explained. “He was deployed to Afghanistan, Instead of telling the classic hero stories, it was well, what happens if you’re in the middle of a gunfight and have dysentery? You can’t stop the gunfight.”
The dictionary is available to order here and here.
Reach Julia LeDoux at Julia@connectingvets.com.
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