• BlitzoTheOisSilent@lemmy.world
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    2 months ago

    Fun fact: The Navy uses the affirmative “aye” or “aye aye” as opposed to “roger” like the Army/Air Force/etc because of similar slang origins. Basically, sailors used to use the word “roger” to mean “fuck,” both as an insult and as a way to identify women they had been with while in port.

    “Yeah, I rogered her last night at the tavern,” kind of thing. But as sailors began to respond to officers using “Roger that (fuck that),” the Navy came down and made “aye aye” the official affirmative response for their personnel.

    And even then, “aye” is simply a “I understand” whereas “aye aye,” means “I understand and will carry out X.”

    The US Navy also launched an investigative unit during the 1800s (I wanna say the 1880s?) to find homosexual sailors and kick them out of the Navy. The unit only lasted a couple of years before being shut down, as the only people volunteering for the unit were homosexual sailors. 😆