When I first arrived in my mission, back a few decades ago, I remember being struck by how many new slang words I heard from other missionaries. I was actually interested enough that I kept a list that I added to periodically whenever I ran into a new word. Unfortunately, I long ago lost that list, so I’m working from memory in this post.
Here are a few slang words that were used frequently in my mission.
bucket — (verb) to waste time; (noun) a waster of time. This is what made photos like the one on the right the height of hilarity in my mission. “Are you just going to bucket all day, you freakin’ buckets?”
punch — to skip out on an appointment. “We were scheduled to see that one guy we had taught before, but he punched, so we tracted instead.”
duke — poop, either literal or figurative. “I’ve got to take a duke.” “Your teaching skills are duke, elder.”
trunky — mentally checked out and ready to go home. “We didn’t get much done this week because my companion is so trunky.”
stat — A quick conversation with someone where you mention all the points in the first discussion so you can count the encounter as a discussion for purposes of counting statistics. “We taught three firsts today, but two of them were just stats.”
MOTR — Morning on the road. Also used as a verb. This was semi-official because it was a policy carried over from the mission president who preceded mine. He had DLs and ZLs make surprise visits to other missionaries in their district or zone in the morning to make sure they weren’t sleeping in and were doing their routine like they were supposed to. “The DL MOTRed us yesterday, so we actually had to do companionship study.”
Those are all the ones I recall. There are a few that I’ve heard were common at particular times and in particular places that I don’t really recall hearing much at all in my mission. These include greenie for a new missionary, and gator for an investigator (which I understand are now called friends, which makes it sound like missionaries teach only Quakers).
Also, I spoke my native language on my mission, which I’m sure meant I missed out on all kinds of fun slang that can develop on the borders between languages. For example, I’ve heard that Spanish-speaking missionaries, I think in my mission and perhaps in others, referred to Jehovah’s Witnesses (which in Spanish is testigos de Jehová) as testiculos de Jehová, or Jehovah’s testicles. Or one of my sisters who served in Italy said she and her companions often referred to their street board they would put up and use to try to start conversations with people not as mostra (show), but instead as mostro (monster).
One last point about language use on my mission is that my mission president fought an ongoing (and largely losing) battle to get us to not use abbreviations. He would always correct us (or have his APs correct us) when we referred to Elder Smith as “Smith” or Sister Jones as “Jones.” Also, he hated it when people said “AP” instead of “Assistant to the President” or “ZL” or “DL” instead of “Zone Leader” or “District Leader.” And needless to say, this went extra for saying “GA” instead of “General Authority.” You might as well have slapped baby Jesus!
I served my mission in Texas in the 1990s. I’d love to hear of examples of missionary slang you heard or used at other times or in other places (or heck, in the same place as I was, but ones that I missed or don’t recall).
Mission slang could be its own field of study for some enterprising graduate student, I think.
In my mission, “trunky” and “greenie” were both used. Our mission president’s wife at one point launched a crusade against the latter, deeming it derogatory. (If it is, it’s very mildly so, it seems to me.) Apparently she also had a beef with the term “hump day”, which referred to one’s 1-year anniversary on the mission. It was late in my mission so I don’t know if her crusade succeeded.
I think getting stood up is such a common part of the mission experience that surely every mission has a slang term for it. In ours it was getting “dogged”. We also developed a term for backing out of a baptismal commitment: the person “baked”. I have no idea where any of these came from.
Your mission president surely would have loved President Nelson’s crusade to use the long name of the church. And I’m sure he didn’t like “D&C” either, if I had to guess.
Trunky and Greenie are near universal, I think. We also used “hump day” for the half way point. I want to say there were other terms for 6 and 18 months that rhymed with hump, but I can’t for the life of me think of what they were. (Jump? Bump?)
We used dad/son for trainer/trainee and thereby also had missionaries who were brothers or grandsons, etc. I don’t know if the sisters also talked this way, because we just didn’t talk to them much. (I was rarely in a city that even had sister missionaries.)
I wonder if speaking a foreign language didn’t limit the amount of slang that we used. Half my mission were natives, the other half Americans, so English slang can only catch on so well. A few words did; even many members knew what ‘trunky’ meant. Mormons already have so many specialized terms (ward, stake, bishop, patriarch, temple, sacrament, etc.) that we use differently than so many other groups, that we already speak a different language sometimes.
We definitely used a lot of acronyms, but in Portuguese. DL and ZL become LD and LZ. But we didn’t have one for the APs. They were just the assistants. We got to count an EPPE every time we asked someone if we could share a message. I’m sure there were many more, but that was decades ago at this point.
Assistants to the President became APs, which became apes, which became ‘monos’ in my South American mission. And if the apes were obnoxious they became ‘monitos’
Three milestones in the field: “bump” (about the six month mark, at which you were no longer a “greenie”), “hump” ( half-way) and “dump.”
To remove an investigator from the teaching pool, we “bailed” on them. “Bombs” were Books of Mormon, “planting bombs” was distributing them.
“GQ” was the golden question, so GQing was contacting by approaching in malls, shops, etc.
“Bruce” was Elder Bruce R. McConkie’s book “Mormon Doctrine”… Both the book and author were referred to. One asked “What does Bruce say about this?”
In my Australian mission, there were always a couple elders assigned to work in the office and take care of cars and other physical necessities. They shared a flat with the APs and didn’t do much proselyting. We just called them “fleet”.
Additionally, “hectic” meant awesome and “dodgy” investigators were likely to dodge appointments.
When a missionary ended their mission we said (in the 70s) that they “died”.
Huh. I’ve not encountered anyone who knows “bucket” outside of European missions.
Thanks, everyone, for your comments.
Quentin, I agree that this would make a great topic for someone’s dissertation, or even ongoing research! I’m sure there’s lots of linguistic stuff around slang that’s already done, and applying it in the relatively more closed environment of a mission might be really interesting. Also, you’re spot on that my mission president I’m sure loved RMN’s push to use the full name of the Church.
DaveW and Old Man, thanks for reminding me about hump day! We totally said that too. Also, although less often, bump, slump, and dump for 25%, 75%, and 100% complete, respectively.
And DaveW, that’s a great thought I hadn’t considered that maybe language collision limited slang adoption rather than enhancing it. We need the graduate student Quentin suggested to answer these burning questions!
KLC, awesome! I’ve heard of “apes,” although not in my mission, but these further extensions are fascinating!
Old Man, that’s so interesting about “Bruce” for Mormon Doctrine. I wonder what he would have thought personally about being referred to that way. Would he have been happy that he was seen as authoritative, or unhappy that he wasn’t being called “the servant of the Lord, even Bruce R. McConkie, apostle and special witness of Jesus Christ”?
Tygan, thanks for your additions! I’ve never heard any of them! But you do remind me that I think we had a particular word that we used for, as you would say “dodgy” investigators, but I haven’t been able to squeeze it out of my brain yet. I might try reading my old mission journals and see if I ever used it.
jc, I heard “died” too, although not in my mission in particular. Did you also say that the companion of someone who finished and went home “killed” them?
Ben, do you know its origin? I have always wondered if it was borrowed from another language, and if it came from Europe, this seems maybe even more likely.
When I served in Puerto Rico in the 2000s, we had:
Buck – noun, a disobedient, lazy, or otherwise worthless missionary. Even the native Spanish speaking elders adopted it: “el es muy buck.”
I suspect that the word for bad missionary is what is going to be most unique to each mission (e.g. I met some Dominican Republic RMs who said that “tigre” was their equivalent term).
Conversely, even when speaking English we all used the Spanish “charla” instead of “discussion” (e.g. “we taught ten first charlas this week”), likely cause it was fewer syllables.
We also had “eternigator”, for those friendly investigators who’d been meeting with missionaries for years, but still had no intention of getting baptized.
We also used “toking” for tracting—ostensibly as an abbreviation of “Tocar las puertas” (“knocking doors”), though the drug reference was obvious.
But it’s another example of how a joke can sometimes pass into common usage, because I definitely recall some very strait laced missionaries insisting to their buck companions that “It’s time to go toking!” I even remember sometimes reporting my numbers to the ZLs and APs with, “Man, we toked all day yesterday and didn’t teach a single charla,” with nary a snort from either of us.
Some document from the mission office listed a bunch of slang terms that we were not to use. In the classic German manner of stacking multiple nouns into a single word, we used the list to create “dudeguyturkmanpinhead”, which we used whenever we were in a rebellious mood.
Ziff, yes. When your companion went home it was said that you killed him or her, as an expression.
I don’t know the origin of “bucket.” I never heard anything similar in French. But given the religious nature of the country, i.e. Catholic in so many ways but almost entirely agnostic/atheist/non-religious, it was a major string of insult to call a missionary “an apostate Catholic bucket.” A disobedient, lazy, uncommitted missionary. IN my sister’s French mission, excessively rule-keeping missionaries were called “arrows” presumably from “straight arrow.”
Some others: if someone skipped an appointment, we said “we got fished.” No idea as to origins. (Catfished maybe?) We also used hump/dump, paternity language, and “killing” a missionary who finished while your comp.
We used the term “chicken foot” for people who were home but wouldn’t answer the door when we were tracting.
We used the “bump” “slump” and “dump” as described. When an investigator missed an appointment, we said that they had “faked” us, I guess as in they had faked us out.
And in Korean, one euphemism for dying is to say that the person turned around and left, or went home, which is exactly what you do when you go home when your mission is over.
Italy in the early 90’s.
AP=Ape
ZL=Zeek
DL=Deek
Various stuff/crap=Hud
Money=Bones
Somebody cancelled an appointment=Schlonged (I know, we were young kids with juvenile humor)
I screwed up= Weefed
William “Bert” Wilson was a pioneer in Mormon folklore, including missionary folklore (not just slang but also things like initiation rituals, pranks, etc.)–he published a book in 1981, “On Being Human: Folklore of Mormon Missionaries.” I heard him speak on this when I was a student at BYU decades ago. When I got a job at Utah State he had just moved there, and graciously agreed to give a fireside address for the stake YAs. We had to move the location from the RS room to the chapel because of the huge turnout. One comment I still remember was when he described “newbie” breakings-in to a group and an RM came up to him afterwards in tears and said, “Nobody ever did that for me. I now realize that’s why I never felt I belonged.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_A._Wilson_(folklorist)
https://scblog.lib.byu.edu/2016/05/03/in-memoriam-william-bert-wilson/
https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt4cgkjm
William “Bert” Wilson researched Mormon folklore, including missionary folklore, back in the 1970s. I attended one of his presentations when I was a student at BYU way back then. When I graduated and got a job at Utah State, he had moved on there and graciously agreed to my request to give a fireside for the Stake Single Adults (this was a “regular” Logan stake, not a student stake). There was such a big turnout we had to move from the RS room to the chapel. One story I still remember, decades later, was when he talked about “initiation” pranks and rituals for new missionaries. After one of his discussions a former RM came up to him in tears and said, “That never happened to me. I’ve just realized, listening to you, that this was why I never felt I belonged.” In 1981 Wilson published a book called “On Being Human: the Folklore of Mormon Missionaries.”
https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt4cgkjm
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_A._Wilson_(folklorist)
https://scblog.lib.byu.edu/2016/05/03/in-memoriam-william-bert-wilson/
I never was a missionary, but I went along on discussions and even did splits with the sisters quite a bit. I remember “mother” was your first trainer and “father” your second. I also heard that the last companion “killed” the missionary that “died” and went home. I later heard that they were supposed to stop using those terms because it was confusing to investigators.
I remember that when they got stood up, at least one missionary pair referred to it as being “kebobed,” because if they were meeting at the church building they waited for them by the bus stop and there was a kebob stand there. They would often buy some to make up for the disappointment. It was unquestionably the best available street food in that Northern European country.
Trunky and greenie are universal I think.
A couple from Northern Argentina, 2007-9:
trucho – “fake, low-quality”, used for disobedient/lazy missionaries
pench – from “pensión,” used for missionary residences
faudge – from “fallar,” meaning to “fall through on” — “oh, that investigator faudged us”