Reference Notice

The emphasis of this educational reference is on words and phrases that appear in published works about war and military service; and there is no pretense of objectivity or completeness, which may be readily found in official documents or government resources. This fragmentary opus is a work in progress, needing both augmentation and expansion. It has been, and continues to be, compiled by the staff of COMBAT, a non-profit entity, from various authoritative and anecdotal resources for general use and public information; and, under the merger doctrine, is not copyrighted. This resource may not be sold or redistributed, nor its source obscured, as explained in the Disclaimer and Accessibility statements posted in the S-1 ADMIN section of this website. All reasonable efforts have been made to verify, through multiple sources, the information compiled in this glossary; however, textual imperfections may persist due to misunderstandings and human errors, for which apologies are respectfully tendered.

As a caveat lector, the staff of COMBAT magazine proclaims this public notice: Vulgar, profane, and obscene dysphemisms, which have been used for every part of speech and rhetorical form, have not been Bowdlerized nor expurgated from this glossary, to the undoubted dismay of purists and the evident enrichment of our mother tongue; so immature or hypersensitive persons should refrain from perusing this indubitably eclectic and contingently egregious compendium. Swearing is usually either juvenile or crass, but military personnel admire talent and respect skill, so the ability to create imaginative expletives and to craft uncommon scurrility is often appreciated.

The principal language of this publication is American English; therefore, any foreign words, neologisms, or other non-standard terms, which are not typically included in an unabridged dictionary, will either be defined or translated in the body of the composition. Any tone marks or other non-European diacritics will either be Anglicized or eliminated [cf: Wade-Giles vs pinyin]. Slang will either be contextually perceptible or commonly pervasive. Military jargon, not already cited in a composition, shall either be conveniently defined in the Mil-Terms glossary integral to this publication, or specified in standard references. Standard references for military jargon may be accessed through links provided in the S-5 Civil Affairs section of this website.

For completeness, some affiliated or appurtenant cross-references may be cited, but will not otherwise be included in this catalogue. Some of the following standard notations may be used in various definitions, citations, or listings:

The relative links between specific entries, which often augment webpages, and which make document navigation more convenient, are not currently included in this glossary. Given the daunting burden such a reformatting task would impose upon a severely limited staff, and the primary obligation of periodically publishing original literature in the magazine section, it is doubtful if hyperlinks will ever be added. The function performed by links between keywords and headwords, and the updating of conventional referrals (ie: v, qv, cf) into hypermedia cues, must therefore be assumed by alternative search methods. The user of the Military Terms of the Modern Era gloss is encouraged to notice that all headwords appear in upper-case letters, that the alphabetic array displayed on the index webpage is an aid to navigation, and that detailed searching may be accomplished by:

• looking for distinctive words with a browser search engine;
  or
• downloading the glossary as a text file, and looking for distinctive words with an off-line operating system or word processor search engine.
  

Please send all corrections and any additions for A Glossary of Military Terms to:
majordomo @ COMBAT .ws