Marine Vocabulary Lesson

The other day I was talking to a friend of mine who is in the Marines. I was joking about how I don’t know what he’s talking about half the time when he uses their lingo/slang- and then I remembered this class and realized, hey, I can use that! So I got him to define a few terms for me, and now I will share them with you: slang apparently used by Marines, as informally defined for me by my friend Mark.

1. Grunt: “Ground Unit Not Trained,” or “musclehead” infantrymen.
2. POG: “Person Other than Grunt.” An insulting term which implies you aren’t a “real” Marine if you aren’t infantry.
3. Blue Falcon: That one guy that screws everyone else over; someone who really needs to get their act together.
4. Boot: Someone fresh out of boot camp, especially one who flaunts the fact that they’re a Marine now and gives you secondhand embarrassment.
5. Skate: A verb; to get the easiest job where you have to do minimal work.
6. Barney style: Instructions given in words even a toddler could understand.
7. Terminal lance: I quote, “the many, many lance corporals who have given up on life, and are just waiting out the rest of their enlistment in agony so they can get out.”
8. Ninja punch: NJP, Non-Judicial Punishment. Mark says this is his favorite term, and is basically criminal charges without a trial and with its own punishment system, used when someone does something stupid but not warranting an actual trial.

Anyone else never heard of most of these before? Or, alternatively, have others to share?

Good Will Shakespeare

Whenever one mentions the name “William Shakespeare,” many different thoughts flood throughout many different minds. Some roll their eyes; some openly praise him; some utter the word “overrated”; some do not care. No matter who you are, though, or what you think about his work, one cannot deny his brilliance. It is obvious that Shakespeare changed the game for literature, theatre, and writing, but what most people do not realize is how much his work impacted the English language as a whole. True, there are people who read Romeo and Juliet and/or Julius Caesar in high school that do not care about his achievements, and might even find them overvalued; however, no one can escape his contributions. Why is this?

Well, Shakespeare had knowledge of seven different languages, and had an estimated vocabulary of about 24,000 words; a truly staggering amount. This background allowed for him to invent new words for the English language-- over 1,700 to be exact-- and also to flesh out our language in more ways than one. In many ways, these words are his most underrated works. Below are some of the most popular (I copied and pasted the word list from William Shakespeare: His Influence in the English Language):

Eyeball, moonbeam (A Midsummer Night’s Dream)
Puking (As You Like It)
Obscene, new-fangled (Love’s Labour’s Lost)
Cold-blooded, savagery (King John)
Hot blooded, epileptic (King Lear)
Addiction (Othello)
Arch-villain (Timon of Athens)
Assassination, unreal (Macbeth)
Bedazzled, pedant (The Taming of the Shrew)
Belongings (Measure for Measure)
Dishearten, swagger, dawn (Henry V)
Eventful, marketable (As You Like It)
Fashionable (Troilus and Cressida)
Inaudible (All’s Well That Ends Well)
Ladybird, uncomfortable (Romeo and Juliet)
Manager, mimic (A Midsummer Night’s Dream)
Pageantry (Pericles)
Scuffle (Antony and Cleopatra)
Bloodstained (Titus Andronicus)
Negotiate (Much Ado About Nothing)
Outbreak (Hamlet)
Jaded, torture (King Henry VI)
Grovel (Henry IV)
Gnarled (Measure for Measure)

Which are your favorites?