Word: lingos
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Each day a woman hangs out her wash to dry alongside one of the myriad branches of the Ho Chi Minh trail in Laos. This innocent-looking domestic scene is of particular interest to U.S. reconnaissance pilots, who daily "go around the corner"-their lingo for their semisecret flights over neutral Laos-to check on the lady's wash. When no laundry is on the line, that is a signal from the sharp-eyed housekeeper that North Vietnamese troops or trucks are moving near by. Within minutes after the pilots notice that the wash is not out, U.S. planes...
...more deeply rooted in a chauvinistic dogma that says black exclusivism equals black superiority -- a romantic contrivance that even the late Malcolm X abandoned. It is disheartening that the only visible product of SNCC's collective array of striking personalities is a kind of street-oriented, ultrahip, political lingo that makes all SNCC statements sound distressingly similar...
...their helicopters "help-o-copters." Last month Los Angeles' KABC hired a pair of chatty girls, blonde Kelly Lange and brunette Lorri Ross, to be traffic spotters. Outfitted in snug, silver pants, the girls quickly mastered the special vocabulary used to describe the chaos beneath them. In the lingo of the traffic reporters, "gapers' block" is a tie-up caused by motorists slowing down to gape at an accident. "Spaghetti bowl" means an intersection where cars habitually pile up. "Carpool kamikazes" refers to autos overloaded with commuters who are not watching where they're going...
...sight of beefy cops on dainty putt-putts has already enriched the city's lingo. Greenwich Villagers call scooter police "buzzy fuzzy"; because of their blue crash helmets, scooter men endure such other names as "blisterheads" and "bubbleheads." But names can never hurt them. So effective are the scootermounted cops that after the first nine putt-putts had been issued to park patrolmen in 1964, muggings dropped by 30% in Manhattan's Central Park, by 40% in Brooklyn's Prospect Park. The lesson was not lost; four high-crime precincts were then quickly scooterized. In a recent...
Both the Put-On and the Gross-Out are part of the Now Generation's "language bag"-a constantly changing lingo brewed from psychological jargon, show-biz slang and post-Chatterley obscenity. What the 1920s admiringly called a "good-time Charlie" is today Freudianized as a "womb baby," one who cannot kick the infantile desire for instant gratification. Anyone who substitutes perspiration for inspiration is a "wonk"-derived from the British "wonky," meaning out of kilter. The quality an earlier generation labeled cool is "tough," "kicky," "bitchin'," or "groovy." But the most meaningful facet of In-Talk...