Military jargon: basic definitions, social application, description in the literature

2024 Author: Henry Conors | [email protected]. Last modified: 2024-02-12 02:42

The army is an isolated system, and what really happens there can only be learned from those who have gone through it. There are many stories around this organization from former soldiers about how they shot every day, jumped into burning tanks and confronted the colonel. But in fact, it turns out that such characters have been washing floors all this time and secretly taking pictures with weapons. When a person enters the army, he is most often dumbfounded. The hierarchy of relations in this male society is already established, the number of prohibitions and customs is large. And one of the main obstacles that serves as an obstacle in the task of understanding what is happening is Russian military jargon. This is a huge list of words, the meaning of which an unknowing person simply will not understand. In addition, the features of the military-professional jargon will depend on the area where the unit is located. Yes, and each part has its own traditions.

What is this?

Military jargon is a set of neologisms that briefly refer to surrounding objects and phenomena that are relatedwith the army, aviation, navy, features of service life. They are used to facilitate communication in this environment, as well as to indicate belonging to it.

Soviet military jargon, as a rule, was formed from the names of models of weapons, ranks, positions, and other household items. Part of it was borrowed from the criminal environment. Some words arose as a consequence of hazing, they reflect hazing between servicemen.

It is noteworthy that naval jargon, aviation jargon and so on have their own characteristics. It's all about a wide variety of speci alties, parts and types of weapons. For the most part, the military jargon of the Soviet years was a borrowing of those words that were used back in imperial times. They were used throughout Russia, and continue to be used in many CIS countries.

Appearance

Nevertheless, the peculiarities of military-professional jargon reflect certain historical periods. The army environment is a kind of cast of the society of different times, it reflected the social phenomena that took place in the state. For example, in the 1960s, there were many men with previous convictions in the army, and it was then that military jargon absorbed many words from the criminal environment. And in the 1990s, he was under the influence of drug addict conscripts. At the same time, slang has always played the role of a kind of additional check - according to its possession, it was found out whether it was “one's own” or “alien”.

Research

Although soldier folklore appeared quite often instudies, military jargon actually remains a little-studied area in philology. Although in the twentieth century, attempts were made to fix youth and criminal slang in dictionaries. However, this process did not spread to the "army language", even with all its diversity and long history, starting from imperial times. Only a few works on this topic are known: “Vocabulary and phraseology of Russian military jargon” by Lazarevich, works by Ksenia Knorre and Andrey Miroshkin. They noted the stylistic decline of this slang, emotive connotation.

One of the largest works on this topic was published in 2000 by V. P. Korovushkin. Doctor of Philology prepared a whole dictionary of non-standard army vocabulary. Other than this work, no such dictionaries have ever been officially published.

Part of it was published in the New Watch magazine. More than 8,000 words were included in the work. It is noteworthy that there are sections on specific wars - after all, the military jargon of veterans of the Afghan war, the Chechen war and many other armed conflicts sometimes differs dramatically. The dictionary also covered the features of slang, starting with the Russian-Turkish wars of 1686-1713. For research, the doctor of science chose more than 600 military diaries, articles, dictionaries, he conducted a special survey, a survey of service people. At the same time, the survey was not authorized.

Oksana Zakharchuk, another researcher of military slang, the dictionary was classified. Some of the words entered the group associated directly with weapons. The next group contacted titles, relationships. The third group consisted of words related to everyday life, occupations of the army.

Besides this, Zakharchuk noted that for the most part the words have a negative connotation. Thanks to the classification of jargon, the desire of the military to bring environmental objects closer to peaceful life turned out to be obvious. Thus, they smoothed out the sharp difference between the military and civilian environments.

Examples

It is noteworthy how the military conscripts were called in youth jargon. So, it is known that employees of the special forces of the GRU were called "banderlog". Initially, intelligence officers of the RVVDKU were called so because, as cadets, they studied acrobatics and studied foreign languages in depth. So, in the army environment, their association with the invented people of Bandar-log monkeys was born. The word quickly spread throughout the troops.

Navy

Naval jargon is closely related to specific maritime concepts. At the same time, these terms are often only allegorical meanings of the same concepts. For example, the rearguard of a pedestrian column is called a pendant.

Technique

It is important not to confuse the code names of the equipment that were assigned to it in the design bureau, and its army designations directly in the units. As a rule, on an everyday basis, the undocumented use of the code designation was not used. Often, designations that were difficult to remember were simply replaced with abbreviations, and sometimes the technique was given a nickname, marking someits characteristic feature. There were a lot of weapons in the entire army history of Russia, and therefore this section is very limited.

It is known that during the Afghan campaign, the "Black Tulip" was called the An-12 aircraft, which took away the bodies of dead Soviet soldiers. "Behoi" was called BMP and BTC, as well as a number of similar vehicles.

"The box" was the name of armored vehicles, including the T-80, jargon appeared during the Chechen war.

Shaitan-pipe is a jet flamethrower, RPG.

"Zinc" was the name of a box of cartridges. The second meaning is also known - “zinc coffin”, in such they transported “cargo 200”.

"Oar" was the name of the SVD rifle. In many parts, this was the name of the AK assault rifle.

"Merry" is the MiG-21. He received such a nickname for a short flight time.

"Alcohol carrier" - MiG-25 fighter. The army gave him this name because his anti-icing system requires at least 200 liters of alcohol.

An ambulance was named "Pill"

Zakhar is a ZIL-157 truck. They called it that by inheritance from the ZIS-150, which was actively used earlier. Also, ZIL-157 is often called a "crocodile" for the special shape of its hood.

"Ribbon" in military jargon is a column of vehicles.

Hazing

"Spirits incorporeal" - army men who have not yet taken the oath. As a rule, this is the name of a young fighter passing the course. This phrase is common in all types of troops.

"Boot" in military jargon - serving in the ground forces.

"Salaga", "siskin", "geese" -military personnel from taking the oath to the first 6 months of service. It is noteworthy that in different branches of the military there are more than two dozen varieties of these names.

"Shoelaces", "carp", "young" - military personnel from six months to a year. There are also about a dozen variants of these words, depending on the localization of a particular part.

"Boilers", "scoops", "pheasants" - served from a year to 1.5 years.

"Grandfathers", "old men", "demobilization" - who served in the army from 1.5 to 2 years.

"Civilian", "demobilization" - those who left the army on the order to be transferred to the reserve.

Barracks

"Ironer", "skis" - boards with handles to create a right angle at the edges of mattresses.

"Kantik" - the edge of the mattress, which was beaten off and ironed with ironing boards. At the same time, this is the name of any line in general, which is given a clear outline during cleaning.

"Vzletka" - a free area in the barracks, where construction takes place.

Uniforms

"Afghan", "Varshavka" - summer or winter military uniform. In parts of OKSVA, she was called an "experimental", since the uniform was tested on the units of these troops. The second name is associated with the fact that the military states of the Warsaw Pact used the same models.

"Peachat", "fofan", "sweatshirt" - this is an ordinary wadded soldier's jacket. It should be borne in mind that it was radically different from the Navy jackets.

"Sand" - fabric or clothes from "hebe". It is painted in shades close to sandy soil. After ironing does not begin to shine likeglass.

"Glass" - "hebe" fabric, which differs from the previous one in that it gives off a glassy sheen after ironing. It's all about the presence of synthetic fiber in its composition.

"Hebe" - cotton fabrics, this word comes from the abbreviation "cotton".

"Pesha" - the same, but for semi-woolen fabrics with the abbreviation "p / w".

"Parade" is the name of the full dress military uniform.

"Citizen" - non-military attire or life outside the army.

"Kamok" - the specific name of the camouflage uniform.

"Bronik" - the name of the body armor.

"Snot" is a stick.

"Cabbage" - buttonholes.

"Brakes" - a braid that is sewn to the bottom of the trousers, it passes under the foot and pulls the edges of the legs to the ground.

Spetsnaz GRU USSR

"Mabuta-jump-sand" - the uniform of the Soviet GRU special forces. There was no shoulder strap on it, as well as other designations. The mabuta's first tags said it was a "men's suit." As for the origin, there are several versions. This was also the name of the suits of 1981, where there were eight pockets, when Alpha, Vympel were formed, and OKSV were introduced into Afghanistan. At the same time, the first model appeared in 1973. This clothing was made in the Ryazan region, as well as in Ivanovo. There were only three colors - green, brown, cream. Winter clothing was dyed gray and brown. The fabric was considered water repellent. The article of the fabric did not change until 1991. Then the production of such clothes stopped.

Additional vocabulary

Zelenka inmilitary jargon refers to green spaces, thickets of bushes.

"Beluga" - underwear, consisting of a shirt and underpants.

"Vshivnik" - a sweater that is worn under a tunic, which is considered a violation of the charter.

"Iron boots" - apply a thick layer of shoe polish on these shoes, and then smooth with an iron.

"Guboi" is called a guardhouse, a place where soldiers and officers are sent to serve their sentences.

“Demobilization chord” is something useful that a demobilization team needs to do for a company before leaving the military unit.

"Piece" was called the ensign.

"Chipok" - an army teahouse or a cafe in a military unit.

Very often in the military environment the word "schmuck" is heard - "a person who has morally fallen." This word came from the criminal environment.

Professionalism

It will be interesting to see how professionalisms are used in military jargon. Professionalism is a word that reflects a specialized activity, it is associated with a profession.

There are cases when such words passed into a neutral, common language. Thus, the features of professionalisms used in military jargon have entered everyday speech very closely. For example, "cargo 200" is the body of the deceased.

According to one version, this is how the bodies were designated in official papers. An order of the Ministry of Defense was issued, approving the procedure for transporting dead fighters. His number was 200, since then such professionalism has appeared.

But the rank and file began to use this expression induring the Afghan campaign, so that they could not be understood by the other side. They transmitted by radio: "I'm carrying cargo-200." Once this word was used only in relation to air travel, but now it applies to any transport.

It is noteworthy that the peculiarities of professionalisms used in military jargon are sometimes associated with borrowings from other languages. In particular, this applies to the Russian and German languages.

Some idioms widely used in everyday Russian speech were once military professionalisms. So, the origin of the phrase "splurge" is military. This expression was first heard in the "Decree" of 1726, it formulated instructions for lovers of hand-to-hand combat: "fighters … threw sand in the eyes, and others … beaten without pity with death beatings."

Very often, professionalism was associated with the need to mask messages over radio communications in such a way that the enemy side did not understand what it was about. Thus, in Afghanistan, the words "thread" were widely used to designate a column of equipment, "cigar" to name missiles, "kefir" was called fuel for equipment.

Full names were also often abbreviated. So, "AKM" is a modernized Kalashnikov assault rifle. There are many such examples.

Military professionalism is characterized by abbreviation of words and individual phrases: “deputy” is a deputy; "fur" - a mechanic; "combat" - military service and so on.

Syllable abbreviations are also known - "disbat", "starley", "drop" and many other options.

The brightest part of the militaryjargon is represented by colloquial speech. It is often difficult to divide the vocabulary of the military into jargons and professionalisms: both are widely used.

The variety of army slang among is determined by its oral presentation. Because of this, individual words can be spelled completely differently. Jargon has a different life expectancy, it depends on the current level of weapons, the location of military units, and the characteristics of the contingent of military personnel. For this reason, military jargon is a mixture of slang from many social groups, youth and criminal environments. The peculiarities of the hierarchy of this male community gave rise to many folklore, moralizing tales, proverbs. Jargon also differs by combat arms.

Specifically for naval slang, the designation of young sailors as "crucians" is characteristic; toilet as a "latrine"; warships as "combat life". "Admiral's hour" is called the afternoon rest; "to crush" means to forbid. The latest jargon in the naval environment comes from the command to cease fire - "Shot!".

"Nizami" refers to the space on the ship in the lower decks. In some parts, this is the name of the personnel who work in the lower deck. "Subscription" - the conclusion of a contract for contract service. "Date" - the financier on the ship.

Paratrooper Jargon

Airborne slang is rooted in the era of the USSR. And a lot of ephemisms adopted here were simply not used in other branches of the military. There is even such a thing as "landing chauvinism."The desire to show their superiority over other troops in this environment is especially high, and this has historical roots.

For example, it is known that during the Afghan campaign, "blue berets" gave fighters of other troops offensive nicknames. The key motto of the paratroopers is: "No one but us." And already he implies that they will be able to, and the rest will not.

"VeDes" among the paratroopers was called officers of the Airborne Forces. It is noteworthy that the famous paratrooper Vadim Grachev, who compiled the corresponding dictionary of the demobilization of the Airborne Forces, posted on LiveJournal, published there a list of paratrooper jargon for all letters except "I". Because in the landing there is no word "I", there is only "we".

Here the same object has a number of names. For example, the airborne combat vehicle - BMD - was called both "Mashka", and "Behoy", and "Bams". While the Kalashnikov assault rifle was called "berdanka", "big", "kladets". Some parts of the slang were common to all the military. There were in the Airborne Forces both "incorporeal spirits" and "demobilization". "Raiders" were called colleagues who got into a hazing story, which later became known to commanders. Such stories were followed by punishment. Despite the common features of military jargon, Vadim Grachev emphasized that among the paratroopers they differed in local semantics, it was understood only by those who specifically served in the Airborne Forces. According to his dictionary, among the paratroopers, it is customary to call the time before the oath “smell” by “smell”. "Looking into the blue lakes" meant cleaning toilets. "Hemorrhoids" paratroopers call signalmen, and "dysentery" - fruits. "Dolphinarium" is called a sink incanteens. "Quarantine" in the slang of the Airborne Forces is a place where only the fighters who have arrived for service are moving away from the shock associated with the start of the service. There are no long-serving ones here.