In the Boonies, It's Numbah Ten Thou'

The fighting man's argot changes with the generations and the geography, the weapons and the war. Hearing the lingo of South Viet Nam, the dogfaces, gyrenes and swabbies of World War II would hardly know Dodge City from the Boonies. A G.I. glossary, updated:

DEP CHI rhymes with hep guy (the ch as in chap), means roughly that. It derives from dep trai, or handsome boy, which Vietnamese bar girls call all U.S. servicemen.

SAO (pronounced sow) also denotes what it sounds like: hog, jerk, liar or anything else derogatory--another bar girl contribution.

CHOI Oi (as in the Yiddish expletive oy oy!) is an all-purpose Vietnamese phrase of uncertain origin, meaning, at best, good grief.

NUMBAH ONE (from pidgin English) means the best. NUMBAH TEN, until recently, meant the absolute worst. As the war has grown more arduous, NUMBAH TEN THOU' has come to describe a man or a circumstance 1,000 times worse than numbah ten, if possible--and far worse than MICKEY MOUSE, a versatile expression that labels an activity superfluous, unheroic, fouled up, or all three.

BOONIES, short for boondocks, is an unaffectionate term for the back country where the fighting and the living are rough. BOONIES NUMBAH

TEN THOU' describes the la Drang Valley.

DAI UY, the Vietnamese rank of captain, is pronounced dye wee by Americans and used to designate anyone in charge of anything.

GRUNT is a current Marine Corps term for its infantryman.

DI DAI (rhymes with tree high) is Vietnamese for "O.K., go ahead," not to be confused with Di Di (pronounced dee dee), which can mean anything from "get out of here" to "follow me."

PEE is a piastre, the Vietnamese monetary unit; FUNNY MONEY and RED DOLLARS mean scrip issued U.S. personnel in lieu of dollars.

THUD is an Air Force onomatope for the F-105 Thunderchief, many of which have been shot down.

ZAP, or WAX, also onomatope, means to clobber.

DODGE CITY is Hanoi, where a pilot has to JINK (zigzag) to keep from getting zapped from the ground.

SHOOTOUT, by contrast, means flying straight down into heavy antiaircraft fire.

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