September 2014- If you haven’t lined up and waited yet, you will. As most of you likely know, our ATC brethren recently retired the phrase “taxi into position and hold” and switched to its more ubiquitous and internationally accepted “line up and wait.”
Those of you who have logged time internationally are no strangers to the term, and it was just a matter of time before we, the U.S. of A., finally switched over to doing things the way the rest of the world does it. Like the metric system. No, wait, cancel that. Like when we traded in Terminal Control Areas for Class Bravo airspace.
Though I’m aware of no celebrations, an official change in ATC phraseology is a rare, and therefore salient, event. Change does not usually come from the top, but actually slides in sideways. For example, no one has yet blackballed “transcribed” or “5×5,” but these terms are now rarely used by pilots or controllers; they are aviation expressions that are simply dying of old age.
Social changes also impact how all of us—not just aviators—speak. In 1974, the Steward & Stewardess Division of the Air Line Pilots Association became the Association of Flight Attendants, and since then, you can’t find a stewardess anywhere.
Human beings have been advancing the written and spoken word since we discovered fire and FAA employees developed prehensile tails. (Oops, typo. I meant “ZAA,” the Zoological Association of America.) Nevertheless, there is an ever-evolving bastardization of all human language as a result of cultural pressures and social opportunity. We love to take a word and give it a whole different meaning, creating slang.
The former senator and student of language S.I. Hayakawa once said, “Slang is the poetry of everyday life,” and speaking of poetry, Carl Sandburg wrote, “Slang is language which takes off its coat, spits on its hands—and goes to work.”
But for heaven’s sake, don’t take their word for it. Sarah Palin, when asked to explain some of the words she’s been evolving—”refudiate,” “misunderestimate,” “wee-wee’d up”—went on to Tweet, “English is a living language. Shakespeare liked to coin new words too. Got to celebrate it!”
You may never hear Palin’s new words spoken by others because sadly, slang is destined to die (though there is a little scientific research to refudiate this). Either the new word meanings are socially a swing and a miss, disappearing after a short period of usage, or they are such an out-of-the-park home run that they slyly but quickly make the transition into real words and lose their slang standing.
You may be surprised to learn the age of some of our best slang:
Redneck – 1830s
Awesome – 1960s
Bad Egg – 1864
Chill – 1970s
Bitchin’ – 1950s
Right on – 1970s
Valet – 1790s
Knocked up – 1830s
Booze – 1930s
Scarf (to eat) – 1960s
Far Out – 1960s
Belch – 1750s
Big House (prison) – 1930s
Munchies – 1960s
Hot mama (cougar) – 1920s
Cougar (hot mama) – 2000s
My generation would like to take credit for promulgating the word “cool,” which still enjoys wall-to-wall usage across the English-speaking planet. Trouble is, that word birthed itself into coolness in the 15th century, not at Woodstock. However, we flower children were absolutely, undeniably the creators of exceptional slang phrases like “Can You Dig It?!” and “Outta Sight!”—neither of which is still in play.
The modern generation is actually the first to try and create its own slang in a rather counterintuitive way, eliminating words altogether. Their phones, often their sole connection to the outside world, might just read:
OMG, I AM BOSMKL @ MY UDI! #:-) (Oh my god, I am bending over smacking my knee laughing at my unidentified drinking injury! Smiling in my fur hat.)
I get it that intercourse between aircraft and controllers needs to be sacrosanct. Probably not the perfect situation when ATC says you’re cleared to descend that a pilot answers, “Yo, I’m getting down with my bad self.”
With only aural communication (currently) available, words are everything. But if we accept the idea that all language must evolve and change to remain viable, then we pilots have to figure out a way to make common aviation phrases have more than one meaning.
The more we can get our aviation terms into the common man’s vernacular, the further we are toward securing our future. Here are some possibilities for creating aviation slang, and you can clearly think of more:
Words & Phrases New Meanings
Touch-and-Go description of your love life after the age of 50
Land and Hold Short see above
Airport sweet red wine preferred by airheads
Decision Height the point after which you are too high to make a decision
Push the Envelope disappearing purpose of the US Postal Service
Say Intentions? phrase of value on Internet dating sites
The Bernoulli Principle head guy at the Bernoulli school
Beechcraft those little floaties your put around your arms when swimming
Flight Review What every passenger should give the airlines after landing
RNAV first-person plural of “MyNav”
ASOS goes on your pasta
Missed Approach when you lose the matchbook cover with her phone number
Power-on Stall learning to drive a stick shift
Stall Strip dressing in a public restroom
Touch down something you can’t do until the goose gets to know you better
Ident description of a poor driver
Circle to Land what a dog does before it lies down
We’re not sure who gave us the term “Traumahawk,” which is slang for “Even though I pushed the rudder pedal all the way to the floor, the rotation didn’t stop.”
These are just examples, of course, and you will doubtlessly come up with some ideas on creating new slang on your own. But don’t take this as any less of an opportunity than it really is—get our words into the mainstream. In the best of worlds, your effort to add life and vigor into the language of aviation might just be the one thing that saves it.
Worst case is that when our air traffic controllers hear the rest of the world speaking the way aviators do, maybe ATC will no longer feel like they’re isolated in some lonely tower. Then we can move on to the next challenge: keeping the controllers awake.
Because Lyn seems to be AOG after OSH, we had to fly a go-around. This column first ran in our July 2011 issue. —Ed.
Screenwriter, philanthropist and good guy Lyn Freeman has been writing aviation articles since before John Glenn joined the Marines. He is the former editor of Plane & Pilot magazine, founder and current chairperson of the Build-a-Plane organization, a master scuba diver, a championship table tennis player and an all-around Renaissance man. Send questions or comments to editor@piperflyer.org.
