DAILY BRIEFING

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DID YOU KNOW ?
 
COCKPIT
    
Control area.    
In a man-of-war, the space below the lower gun-deck (otherwise    
the midshipmen's mess) also served as the surgeon's operating    
room during battles. Grapeshot and flying oak splinters the size    
of javelins produced horrific injuries, so it was perhaps inevitable    
that this area, blood soaked in battle, was nicknamed "the cockpit" in    
the late 1600s by drawing a parallel with the arena where cocks were    
pitted to tear each other to pieces in a blood-splattered spectacle.    
When smaller vessels such as the modern yacht came into use, the    
term transferred to the corresponding area, which now housed    
the steering gear and navigational aids. YACHT    

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        DID YOU KNOW ?
   
        BERSERK
   
   Violentfrenzy.    
   Tyr was a Scandinavian warrior-god whose devotees were famed for    
   charging into battle stark naked, or sometimes with just a bear-skin    
   cape. The warriors were beset with a form of battle madness of such    
   extremes that they were reputedly unable to distinguish friend from    
   foe, and this was called berserk.    
   The origin of the name is not entirely clear but is known to stem    
   kom one of three Norse options: bjorn serkr, "bear-shirt"; berr serce,    
   "bare of mail," or berr serkr, "bare of shirt." The inclusion of berserkers    

    in raids on England gave us the present English usage.    
   Regarded as a warrior-elite, they were free to do much as they    
   pl-easedwithin their own communities, were they raped and murdered    
   atwill. Theywere last mentioned in AD 860 asthe personal bodyguard    of the
   Norwegian King Harald ~airhir (AD 850-933). RUN AMOK    

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DEAD AS A DOORNAIL
    
Completely defunct.    
Fourteenth-century carpenters constructing fortified doors for    
castles and keeps had to build them in such a way that they could not    
be dismantled from the outside. As may still commonly be seen in    
the structure of church doors and the like, this called for heavy ball-    
headed nails that were impossible to grip with any tools of the time    
and that also had a spike far longer than was required to penetrate the    
door panels and the internal batons. This excess shank of the nail    
was bent over and hammered flat against the internal face of the door    
in a process called "clinching or "dead-nailing." Through a pun on    
"dead," the expression has been used from the mid-1300s of anyone    
unmistakably dead.    

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PASS THE BUCK
    
Shifting responsibility.    
In the early 19th century in the American West, it became customary    
to keep a piece of heavy-gauge buckshot on the poker table as a    
marker to indicate where the deal lay next; some say this marker was    
a buckhorn-handled knife, but weapons on a poker table does not    
seem a sensible idea. As each successive player picked up the deck to    
deal, he passed the buck to the man on his right. Some forms of poker    
precluded shuffling between rounds for two reasons: firstly, a good    
card sharp needs to work the deck to gain an edge, and secondly it    
gave the more able players a chance to build up a rough idea of the    
running order. In a game without shuffling, the only way players    
could "shake things up a bit" was to miss out his deal and simply pass    
the buck. Sometimes this would be done by more than one player to    
shift the buck halfway round the table.    
In high-stake and private games in which poker chips were the    
norm, a silver dollar was used as the marker but still called the buck.    
This is why a dollar is still called a buck. The phrase "the buck stops    
here" was made famous by poker-mad Harry S. Truman (1884-1972)    
who kept such a sign on his desk in the White House. It was made for    
him by the inmates of Oklahoma's El Reno prison and mailed out to    
him by the warden on October 2, 1945.    

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BANZAI
   
Foolhardiness or suicidal tactics.    
The term is of Chinese origin, and while its literal meaning is "ten    
thousand," it is also understood to indicate an infinite number, in the    
same way as the Greek word myriad. "Banzai" was adopted by the    
Japanese in the 8th century but fell from popular use until the late    
19th century, when it was revived as a chant beseeching the emperor    
to live forever, as he was considered a living god.    
The Japanese Army adopted the term as a battle-cry for suicide    
squads, who would charge into the fray screaming the term in the    
notion that immortality awaited them. These tactics were successful    
against poorly-armed and -trained Chinese troops in the First    
(1894-95) and Second (1937-45) Sino-Japanese Wars, but far less    
effective against properly trained Allied troops whose modern    
weapons were capable of shooting several hundred rounds per minute.    
The last banzai charge occurred at the Australian POW    
Compound No 12, Cowra, New South Wales. More than half of the    
4,000 internees were Japanese, and on August 5, 1944 a large mob,    
armed with sticks and homemade knives, launched a banzai charge    
at the perimeter fence, where machine-gun emplacements killed    
about 350 of them before the situation was brought under control.    
The Japanese Gardens and Cemetery, later designed and laid    
out at Cowra by Ken Nakajima, are still a major tourist attraction. In    
general usage, dangerous drivers (i.e. those with a death-wish) are    
called "banzai boys,'' and a Royal Navy group going ashore to get    
drunk is known as a "banzai party." KAMIKAZE    
   

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DID YOU KNOW ?

WHOLE NINE YARDS

   
Everything; all-out effort.    
Although it is difficult to pin down this expression to any particular    
plane or theater of war, the timing of its emergence into general    
speech in the 1950s or 1960s and the fact that it almost certainly    
had a military origin of some kind does lend support to the notion    
that the inspiration was the 27ft-(9 yard) ammunition belts carried    
by many World War I1 fighters flown by both the British and the    
Americans. If a pilot homed in on a target and expended all his    
ammunition in a determined and sustained attack, then it is easy to    
see how talk of "give it the whole nine yards" could have arisen in    
mess chat. That said, this derivation does not go unchallenged, but    
until someone comes up with a better suggestion it has to stand as    
the best bet.    

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CHASTITY BELT
    
Metal or leather girdle preventing sexual intercourse.    
The myth of the chastity belt grew out of the notion that knights riding    
off to war or a crusade would encase their beloved's loins in such a    
device to preclude any lapse of virtue during their separation. This is,    
however, a modern misunderstanding of the numerous medieval    
references to chastity belts and girdles, which were made of cord    
knotted into a distinctive pattern and tied about the waist to announce    
the wearer's intention to remain chaste, equivalent to the present-day    
virginity ring. According to Keyser von Eichstad's Bellifortis (1405),    
respectable women of Florence and Venice opted for "iron breeches"    
when venturing about those notorious cities, but these were anti-rape    
devices for which the women themselves kept the keys. In the 19th    
century smiths and artisans began to manufacture objects such as they    
imagined a chastity belt to have been and to sell them off to museums,    
and this is where the image of the locked, metal girdle originated.    
Eventually, the British Museum, the Musee National du Moyen Age,    
and the Germanisches Nationalmuseum, to name but a few, removed    
all such items from display.    

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UNION JACK
    
British flag.    
Some argue that this is only the name of the flag when flown from the    
jackstaff of a warship and that otherwise the flag should be known as    
the Grand Union, but this is dismissed as a relatively recent idea by    
the Flag Institute of Great Britain. The idea that the flag should be    
flown upside down to indicate distress is also incorrect. Although    
it sounds a mite fanciful, the term more likely began life as the    
commoners' nickname for the flag as based on the name Jack, which    
is actually the pet form of James (Latin Jacobus). This is certainly    
the derivation favored by the historian Dr David Starkey.    
After countless wars and cross-border spats, the first significant    
step toward a United Kingdom came in 1603 when the same king    
held thrones as James I of England and James VI of Scotland. Three    
years later this union was celebrated by the new flag, which was    
referred to as the Flag of Britain. By 1625 there was mention of    
the device as the Flag of the Union, but by far the more popular    
with the general people was the Jack Flag and quite possibly Jack's    
Flag. TORY    

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WASHOUT
    
Abject failure.    
Below the targets on pre-World War I military target ranges sat the    
markers, who held long sticks that they used to indicate the accuracy    
of the shots. These poles were topped with a 9-inch metal disc that    
was painted black on one side and white on the other. A shot striking    
the outermost division was indicated by spinning the pole, and one    
that missed the target completely was indicated by the disc being    
swung to and fro in an arc across the face of the target as if washing    
it, hence the term.    

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GOON
   
Stupid and brutal person.    
Although the term has been around since the 16th century, when    
sailors referred to the albatross as the "gooney bird," the term's    
modern popularity and application is specific to the 1920s Thimble    
Theater cartoon strip, from which the American troops adopted    
many terms and expressions.    
Long before it evolved into Popeye, Thimble Theater was the most    
popular cartoon in America, and Alice the Goon, a bulky creature    
with a bald head and long nose, made a regular appearance. Although    
E. C. Segar's Alice was placid and good natured, the term was    
used in the late 1930s for any thug brought in to "regulate" striking    
workers. Within a decade British and American POWs were using it    
of their German guards; it then moved into general use to describe    
anyone deemed stupid or brutal.    
In more recent times, ex-serviceman and comedian Spike    
Milligan (1918-2002), who found much humor and comfort in the    
lunacy of Thimble Theater during the war, named his famous Goon    
Show after Alice, whose friend, the hamburger-crazed Wellington    
Wimpy, gave his surname to the burger-chain. JEEP    

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DAMN THE TORPEDOES, FULL SPEED AHEAD   
    
Proceed despite obvious dangers.    
On August 5,1864, during the American Civil War, Union Admiral    
David Farragut's fleet entered Mobile Bay to take on the Confederate    
fleet. Almost immediately, he lost his lead ship, USS Tecumseh, to a    
mine (then known as a torpedo) and, despite the very obvious    
presence of other devices afloat in the bay, he ordered his captains to    
proceed. The fate of the USS Tecumseh had caused another ship to    
falter and hold up the line, prompting Farragut to shout "Damn the    
torpedoes! Four bells! Captain Drayton, go ahead [this to the bridge    
of the faltering ship] Jouett, full speed!" (this to his own captain).    
Farragut's audacity won the day and he proceeded to sink several    
enemy ships and capture the remainder in the bay, including the    
Confederate flagship, Tennessee.    
Although the American Civil War did see the advent of mines with    
electric firing devices -most notably those designed by Samuel Colt    
of pistol fame -these were notoriously unreliable, and a torpedo could    
still be as unsophisticated as a barrel of gunpowder set adrift with a    
slow fuse and a lot of hope, although if it found a target it could have    
a stunning effect. It was named from the Latin torpere,"to stun," which    
is also the Latin term for the so-called electric eel, which is really a    
fish with a 500-volt tail. Roman doctors were yell aware of the torpor    
these creatures could induce if they shoved them into the armpits of    
hysterics and epileptics, so the Roman Navy adopted the same term    
for the ram on the front of a warship, a burning rock hurled from a    
catapult, or even a fire ship; anything that "stunned" an enemy ship.    

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FLASH IN THE PAN
      
Transitory fame.       
There have been attempts in America to link this expression to the       
California Gold Rush (1848-55) and a single flash of gold in the       
prospector's pan, which failed to reveal more. Although prospectors'       
slang did produce talk of successful ventures "panning out," and       
"dishing the dirt" from their gossiping while working, "flash in the       
pan" is first noted in the 17th century in reference to a common failing of a militiaman's flintlock.    -   
Early flintlock weapons were not known for their reliability, and    
a common malfunction involved the spark igniting the gunpowder    
in the priming pan, which then faded to ignite the main charge in    
the barrel. The result was all flash and no bang, so the expression    
soon referred to people and events of great show but little substance    
GO OFF HALF-COCK and COCKSURE

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WEAR YOUR HEART ON YOUR SLEEVE
    
Tie your fate to that of another.    
Prior to a medieval joust each lady of the court would select a    
champion to whom she was likely romantically linked. Her selected    
knight would be presented with her scarf, which he tied around    
his arm and secured with the lady's brooch for all to see; the lady    
had pinned her hopes on her champion, and he was then said to be    
"wearing his heart on his sleeve."    

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PARTING SHOT
    
Cutting remark issued on departure.    
The army of the Parthian dynasty of Persia (modern Iran) included a    
large number of lightly-equipped horse archers. They were extremely    
skillful, and one of their tactics was to feign retreat and then turn in    
the saddle and cut down pursuers with an unexpected shot. Over    
time, the expression has altered from "Parthian shot" to "parting shot."    

[Jackie-boy]

Oversexed, overpaid and over here

Meaning

Comic line, making fun of the US Army in Europe in WWII. There was a good humoured banter between the GIs that were stationed in Britain prior to and during WWII and the British citizenry. The GIs had a come-back - calling the Brits, "underpaid, undersexed and under Eisenhower".

cookConditions were harsh in Britain in the early 1940s and there was also an undercurrent of unease that was conveyed by the phrase, especially amongst British men, who resented the attraction of GIs, with their ready supply of nylons and cigarettes, amongst British women. The artist Beryl Cook, who was a young woman at the time confirmed this in an interview to the BBC in the late 1970s. I can't find the transcript of the interview, but from memory it was words to the effect of, 'food was scarce, but we supplemented our income by a little impromptu whoring with the GIs - we all did it'. Many of these liaisons were love matches rather than merely commercial transactions though, as the thousands of marriages between US servicemen and British women (the GI brides) is evidence of.

The line was also used in Australia, in much the same context.

Origin

The phrase was popularized by Tommy Trinder (1909-1989), a well-known and well-liked English comedian (seen here with Phil Silvers). His version of the line which, although he gave it wide circulation was probably coined by someone else, was "overpaid, overfed, oversexed and over here".



Strangely, since there can't have been anyone over the age of ten in Britain at the end of the war who wasn't familiar with the phrase, it appears very seldom in print. It must have been recorded earlier, but the earliest reference I have found is in a US newspaper The Morgantown Post, 1958, in an article by Holmes Alexander:

"The British regarded us then as well-meaning but blundering intercessors whom they rather preferred to have on their island than the Jerries. We were, in the well-known phrase, 'overpaid, oversexed and over here', and we were in British eyes overdecorated, overstaffed, overmaintenanced and overbearing."