Wednesday, February 27, 2008

Word Origins: Roger that

History of "Roger that"



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In military radio communication, the receiver say "roger that" to confirm that they truely understand the message. So, why Roger? Why not John, Smith, Bush or just I got it??? Let me tell you why.

Back to the old time before radio communication was developed, military used Moss code to communicate.

They use the Moss code "R" to represent the word "Receive" ,which later became "yes", to make the communication faster.


When radio communication came to replace the old technology, the letter "R" was still used to represent the "yes."

However, military faced difficulty to pronouce the letter "R" especially in critical situation.

Therefore, they looked for the word to represent the alphabet "R" and here it came Roger.

Today, Roger become a common word in military radio communication to represent the word "yes."

Learning Part
The author plays with the word "berg"

Military = Armed force

Moss code = The first telecommunication use set of dash (long signal) and dot (short signal) to represent characters.

Represent = Indicate by symbols

Critical = Under very serious condition

Alphabet = The letter of a language

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