acronyms are the obvious carryover of the culture of military consultants. Ever since RAND began. Talk is what separates the worlds — words are weightless until the ink meets acronym, meets misspelling, meets redefinition — the insider trading; the spoken tattoo before tattoos were issued like condoms at a reservists deployment to the bible belt.

The cavalry, the rough riders — The Navy the submarines . we inherit their wind .

In polite parlance– vetting evolved: “veterinarian” to “vet” emerged around the 1860s. By 1891, the Oxford English Dictionary recorded the first use of “vet” as a verb, specifically meaning to have a horse medically checked for health and soundness before a race. [ vet before bet ]. It was big in British circles. Betters and upper class public school alums. Spy games, initiations, evaluation of what it took to crack the egg. Loyal, royal, or just prankster foils. Mid 1980s “vetting” remained a Britishism. Civilians adopt it as covert prestige or in-group signaling.

Vetting a horse, when the cav road off-road on hoofs as the infantry hoofed it. Male horses have a way of becoming excited at the wrong time. Part of the veterinarian’s chores in the WWI era was to don greased gloves and “tame” him. Such tales make the way around, becoming larger, sharper, tuned enough so they become encoded shorthand for alternate actions. Those becoming shadow sayings. We know, you don’t. We know you don’t know.

Take the soldier to dogpatch. Have Susie vet him. Certainly didn’t mean give him a physical, making certain not to forget feet fungus.

Fort Bragg
My direct experience: inside word — banis — for Balance point of the m-14. The sergeant’s accent making what he said into a specialized term absent from the manual on proper use of the rifle. “.. here, your hand on the banis …”

vetting ain’t vaping
drop your drawers and pick up your whores…going nucular , newclearer, is the dot tat of speech. You don’t buy it in 29palms; its only done on shore leave in the land we do not speak. Was a time, the time of drafts n dodgers, when tattoos were only for navy. Tats acquired at special places — places your mother wouldn’t approve, but your moms not here.
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Military jargon is created for brevity, precision, and emotional distance in life-or-death situations. When stripped of its operational context and dropped into a corporate boardroom or a casual conversation, that precision transforms into a status symbol. Once a military term becomes widely adopted as civilian plumage, it loses its value as authentic insider marker.

Era	Primary Mechanism of Spread	Social Function
Draft Era ( 1940- 1973 )	Mass Conscription: Millions of civilians temporarily became soldiers and brought the language home	Shared Experience: Signaled common ground, dark humor, and collective endurance.
Post-Draft / AVF (1973–Present)	Cultural Emulation: Business, media, and subcultures actively imported terms from a smaller, isolated military class.	Insider Plumage: Signals elite competence, tactical awareness, or proximity to authority. Role playing sustains it.

We all seek to become Smarticus.