ring knocker

Graduate of one of the United States' military service academies, which operate as collegiate institutions.

Use of term is said to be especially prominent among graduates of the U.S. Naval Academy (Annapolis, Maryland).

Among U.S. military officers, they're known as "ring knockers" because they proudly wear the big, gold class rings they earned when they graduated from one of America's military academies. (TIME magazine, April 2001)

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wick dipped, get my

Male slang for sexual intercourse, where "wick" (as in candle-wick) is symbolic for penis, and "dipped" or "dip" symbolizes the in-and-out motion of sexual intercourse.

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example of wick dipped, get my:

Anxious Sergeant, holding phone: "I have to tell him where the Captain is. Where's the Captain?"

Corporal: "The Captain's getting his wick dipped."

Sergeant, on phone: "Sir, the Captain is getting his wick dipped."

(slight paraphrase from movie THREE KINGS.)

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backslash

A mark of punctuation ( \ ) introduced in 1960 as a deliberate way to convert two ALGOL symbols ("up" and "down" carets) into ASCII by using the new backslash and its traditional opposite number, the virgule or slant ( / ):

\/ - or - /\ for example.

The backslash went on to find use in early UNIX programs and today is party of a typical QWERTY keyboard, usually to the right of the bracket (and braces) keys. Other terms for the mark include slosh, reverse virgule, and reverse slash.

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If I see a backslash ( \ ) at the end of the line, does it mean go to the next line or go to the next term?

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all in

Originally and still a poker metatphor, 'all in' has also come to mean a situation whose subject is unreservedly involved, without qualification. Fully committed. In this sense the term "all in" is almost the same as its denotative opposite, "all out," as in all-out warfare.

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All in means you don't stop for Sundays.

All in means nobody can talk you out of it.

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(from New York Times online, October 17, 2011):

Mr. Immelt’s remarks took on the tone of a halftime pep talk. He said that with a clearer regulatory structure, an increased export base and an “all-in” business climate, the United States would be able to compete on a global front.

---Note that the Times used the term 'all in' with a hyphen separating the two words, which is customary when such a term is used as a single adjective. (Compare: "Frank is just flat-out broke".) Also note that the Times put slightly distancing quotation marks around the phrase in the above Immelt citation. This probably means that the Times writer recognized the phrase as a colloquialism, not yet fully acceptable standard written English, in this extended (non-poker) usage. Some grammarians (cf. Strunk and White, THE ELEMENTS OF STYLE), object to ironic or distancing quotation marks on the theory that if a term or phrase is known to most readers, introduction or contexting is not necessary. Most likely, though, the New York Times' elaborate style sheet does not forbid such use.

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jagoff

"Jagoff" (sometimes "jag-off") seems to have originated in Pittsburgh but is also recognized in the Midwest as slang for an inept, feckless, contemptible, or generally worthless person, a loser, a "schlemiel."

The term is almost certainly derived from the verb "jack off" (through noun "jack-off") as in "masturbate," but somewhat like the British use of "wanker," it is usually not a direct comment on self-pleasuring, but more of a general term of contempt or deliberate abuse. Like "wanker," "jagoff" is somewhat vulgar and not to be used lightly, and avoided in cultivated speech, but is recognized by all in the regions in which it has currency.

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The book KILLER CLOWN relates that John Wayne Gacy became especially flustered or angry when called a "jagoff." So the police deliberately used that term to throw him off-balance during interrogation.

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Clappertrap

Bleats of wounded outrage in a tone of arrogant moral superiority from those who have trashed our civil liberties.

Named for James Clapper, head of NSA.

"The President says we weren't informed that our phone records were secretly being turned over to the FBI because we didn't need to know."

"What utter Clappertrap."

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Shadowy Men on a Shadowy Planet

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Toronto-based rock trio (1984-91) credited with fusing the Punk style (Dead Kennedys e.g.) with Surf (the Ventures) into a distinctive but soon-imitated sound (sometimes called third-gen Surf).

The band usually recorded without vocals and has a number of EP's and CD's to its credit. Its last CD was released in 1995 but the band had effectively come to an end with the death of bassist Reid Diamond to cancer in 1991.

Televiewers may know Shadowy Men best from one particular song: "Having an Average Weekend," which was adopted by the Canadian satirical troupe Kids In The Hall as intro/outro music to the half-hour show of the same name.

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"What was that band on the radio that played those interesting chords?"

"Dude, you've never heard of Shadowy Men on a Shadowy Planet? They were huge in the eighties and early nineties. Even did the theme music for 'Kids In The Hall' on TV."

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