Tag Archives: so to speak

You Can Talk Like a Fighter Pilot, but Should You?

It seems everybody wants to be a fighter pilot, or at least pretend to be one.  Many people seem to quote fighter pilot movies without knowing what they’re actually saying.  Some quotes are accurate (pilots do say “Fox 3” when firing AMRAAMs and “Fox 2” when firing Sidewinders, a la Will Smith in Independence Day); others, not so much (pretty much everything in Top Gun).  While most fighter pilot-sounding quotes may just sound cool, quite a bit of real fighter pilot lingo is laced with sexual innuendo through the use of “clever” linguistic games.

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