I am a freelance writer of magazine and newspaper columns and articles. That means that
I write these pieces on a fee-paid assignment basis rather than on a regular-salary-with-benefits
arrangement with a single employer. Most medieval knights were committed to a feudal lord, but
those who weren’t could hire themselves and their lances to anyone willing to pay for their
“freelance” military services.

Writers, students, workers, and business people constantly face deadlines, dates when
manuscripts and homework must be submitted and orders filled. When such deadlines are not
met, penalties result, such as lower grades or loss of business. But the punishment for straying
beyond the original deadlines was more deadly.

During the American Civil War, a deadline was a line of demarcation around the inner
stockade of a prison camp, generally about 17 feet. At the notorious Confederate camp in
Andersonville, Georgia, a line was actually marked out some distance from the outer wire fence.
Any prisoner crossing this line was shot on sight.

Writer Douglas Adams, author of “A Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy,” quips, “I love
deadlines. I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly by.”
Every writer wants to create a blockbuster. That word first exploded onto the scene in
World War II Britain as Royal Air Force slang for a bomb of enough penetrating power to shatter
whole blocks of homes and pavements. By the later 1940s “blockbuster” had come to signify a
megahit play, film, concert, or book.

“Freelance,” “deadline,” and “blockbuster” are but three words among thousands that
have entered our language through warfare and other hostilities. Honoring the 250-year history
of our U.S. Army, I offer other fighting words that have moved from war to peace in our
everyday vocabulary:

• “Ambulance” issues from an invention of Napoleon Bonaparte’s l’hopital ambulant, “walking hospital,” a light litter that served as a field hospital for wounded soldiers. We see the word “amble” in the Preamble to our Constitution, an initial walk before the longer journey through the document.
• “AWOL” began life during World War I as an acronym for “Absent Without Official Leave.” During World War II, the meaning extended to civilian life to identify any person absent from any commitment without explanation. “Snafu” and “MIA” are two among many additional crossover military acronyms and initialisms.
• The expression “bang for the buck” started as an alliterative iteration for how much destructive power the Defense Department gets for the money it shells out.
• Bikinis, those skimpy two-piece swimsuits for women, are named after the Marshall Islands atoll, where the first hydrogen bombs were tested after World War II. Quite possibly the name “bikini” was chosen as a metaphor comparing the explosive effect of the swimsuit on men to the bombs detonated on that Pacific atoll.
• From one Nicholas Chauvin of Rochefort we gain the eponym “chauvinism.” Chauvin was a veteran soldier of the first Republic and Empire, whose overly demonstrative nationalism came to be ridiculed by his comrades.
• “Decimate” once described the nasty habit of the Romans of maiming or killing one out of every ten captives or mutineers. Now “decimate” means “to destroy a large number of things,” with no connection to the number ten.
• Since the 18th century “field day” has designated a special day set aside for military maneuvers and reviews. Through a linguistic process called expansion, “field day” has broadened to mean “a day marked by a sense of occasion and great success.”
• “Jeep” sprang from the letters GP (“general purpose”), pronounced “jeep.” The U.S. Army employed the rugged, four-wheel-drive, all-purpose vehicle in World War II. Eighty years later, the jeep’s design remains popular with civilians.
• “A last-ditch effort” is a figurative extension of the military concept of the last ditch of defense.
• “Shell shock” is a nervous condition resulting from concussive exposure to active combat. The name for this acute stress syndrome came into being during World War I, when soldiers fighting in the trenches for months on end were exposed to constant shelling by the enemy. Nowadays “shell shocked” describes the aftereffects of any traumatic experience.
• During the early Civil War (July 1, 1861), General Bernard Bee described Confederate Colonel (later General) Thomas Jackson’s resolute defense at the First Battle of Bull Run thusly: “There is Jackson, standing like a stone wall.” From then on, the commander was nicknamed Stonewall Jackson. “To stonewall” has become a verb meaning “to block or delay an order or request.”