Talk:spratmo

Etymology

Hypothesis: This looks like a military acronym to me. It may be a pseudo acronym, a parody made up by the Tuskegee Airmen or it may have been in broader circulation. "Sp" is not unusual for "special". MO was "officially" "morale officer". So it could just be "morale". I don't have any good ideas for the other letters. They might be from a completely different, non-military source or "at" could be the preposition just like "in" in "CinC". DCDuring TALK 01:33, 23 August 2012 (UTC)

Plausible, but (obviously) incomplete. It might be an anachronism, or a misunderstanding on my part, but one of the cites seems to imply that the Tuskegees were using the term before deployment (which is when military slang tends to form). --Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 01:38, 23 August 2012 (UTC)

I have no contrary facts about when military slang forms, but I doubt that any of the writing was contemporary. There is a recently published book of love letters (not accessible online, reader review here that might give us more of a clue about timing, but it's not at my public library and not otherwise on my reading list. DCDuring TALK 02:01, 23 August 2012 (UTC)