Salty Talk for the Navy

There was a time when a Navy man talked like a sailor. He cooked in the galley and ate on the mess deck. If he got out of line he was thrown into the brig. But in the 1970s the Navy adopted the language of landlubbers. The galley became a kitchen; the mess deck was termed the enlisted dining facility; the brig was transformed into a correctional facility. Even the snappy BOQ, Bachelor Officers' Quarters, gave way to unaccompanied officer personnel housing.

Secretary of the Navy John F Lehman Jr. has been waging a one-man war against what he terms "the bureaucratization of naval language." Last week, in an effort to restore "our nautical lexicon," he ordered all Navy facilities to return to traditional usages by Jan. 1. No longer will passageways be halls or heads identified as toilets. Windows will once again be portholes, and ceilings will be overheads. Lehman, a naval aviator, also objects to recruiting pitches like "The Army wants to join you," feeling that such lines convey a "sense of apology" about the military. Says Lehman: "We're throwing that sort of thinking into the dustbin."