Military Speak

I'm on my soap box today about a pet peeve or rather peeves, euphemisms and incorrect pronunciations, many of which seem to have their basis in the military.  I'll address the latter first.  One that has bothered me for years is the mispronunciation of "cache" as is "weapons cache," "a collection of items of the same type stored in a hidden or inaccessible place," according to The Oxford College Dictionary, which I keep at my elbow.

I don't know if the mispronunciation was promulgated by members of the military emulating superior officers or being afraid to correct them, but somewhere in the last decade of war, and more war, this word, properly pronounced cash, found its way into military speak as "cachet," ka' shay, "the state of being respected or admired, prestige," again, according to The Oxford College Dictionary.  Many of us wouldn't mind finding a cache of cash right now.  It might give us a certain cachet.

C'mon, guys, you can get a paperback dictionary at a thrift store for pennies if you don't have access to the internet.  Get it right.

I guess I was prompted to blog about this after reading an on-line AP wire service story last week about planned military cuts in which Deputy Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter, Ashton B. Carter, that is, was quoted as saying, "That's the fate of things that become too expensive in a resource-constrained environment."  Resource-constrained environment?  I think I'm going to change the name of our cabin from Amazing Grace (that's what the white sign above the window, hand painted by my sister, proclaims), to Resource-Constrained Environment.  (Who are those guys peering out the window?  I'll blog about them one of these days).

As an added noted, Wikipedia, says that the Deputy Secretary of Defense is actually the (DEPSECDEF)!! and "is the second-highest ranking official in the Department of Defense of the United States of America...."  It goes on to point out that "The Deputy Secretary, by statute, must be a civilian, at least seven years removed from services [emphasis mine] as a commissioned officer on active-duty [why is active duty hyphenated?  It's not a compound adjective.] at the date of appointment."  Old habits die hard.

Then--don't you just love how these ideas come together from different sources into a mosaic of sorts?--in the book I recommended yesterday, Savages, by Don Winslow, he uses the term, "non-symmetrical conflict" to describe the guerrilla warfare techniques, such as Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs), the protagonists, one of whom had learned them from the enemy in Iraq and Afghanistan, use on the members of a drug cartel.  "They used to call it guerrilla warfare, now they call it something else--non-symmetrical conflict--...the small versus the big."  Osama bin Laden's assassination? The Special Forces rescue of the Somalia hostages?  Obama's announcement about a "leaner" military investing, according to a January 5, 2012, Washington Post on-line story, "more heavily in Special Operations forces, which have a smaller footprint and require less money than conventional units"? Occupy Wall Street? Maybe the latter doesn't qualify since its 99% versus the 1%.

Do you use a dictionary?  Do you have a dictionary?  Teddee