Origin of 'stacked'

[ACW599]

Anyone know the origin of the word 'stacked', as in ceased flying for the day?

John

[BEagle]

Stack the chairs and tidy the place up.

Yoof of today probably never had to do that - against Health and Safety or some other pettifogging bull$hit!

[ACW599]

Nah. Much too simple and logical :-)

Yes, that's probably it. Was hoping it might be something arcane and entertaining, but now you mention it the classroom chairs in schools used to be "stacked" for the cleaner.

John

[Pontius Navigator]

As in Cards?

On the BCBS Flight (pre-1066 Flt) the kirkee school would start immediately after met brief. As crews were called forward new players would take their place.

As the day progressed the first aircraft would return about 6 hours later with the school still in progress. Eventually the 'day school' (non-flying crews) would 'stack' and the returning crews would take over until pub rise. About 6 o'clock the school would STACK the cards.

Howzat?

[Pub User]

At (RAF) Flying Training Schools the sorties were (are?) displayed on little plaques in runners on the programme board. As the sorties were completed they were then removed from the board and placed in a pile to one side. Delays were accomplished by sliding the programme plaques to the right; if the board was full, some may 'fall off the programme' (literally) at this point. When all sorties were completed, the plaques were all 'stacked'.

The chairs at my FTS were of the easy-chair (non-stackable) variety.

[ralphmalph]

IMHO,
Stacked was about beibg finished for the day..............if you were unfortunate to be around then stacking was all about rubbing off that days flights?
......................

yours

tony

[ZH875]

Our stores person was well stacked...

[Blacksheep]

BEagle's correct. In the good old days, briefing room chairs were wooden fold-ups - a bit like a deckchair. At the end of a session we folded the chairs up and stacked them at the back of the room on our way out. 'Stacking' was a general expression used by all ranks, in all trades from Aircrew to RAFP. As slang goes I think that, along with 'Gen' or the more specific 'Pukka Gen', its as old (?)as the RAF itself.

[Roland Pulfrew]

And now that Blackers has raised it... what/where does Pukka Gen and Duff Gen come from?

[BEagle]

'Pukka gen' comes from Urdu (or possibly Hindi?) and is an expression imported from the Indian Army - viz 'Pukka sahib'. 'Gen' being an abbreviated word for 'intelligence'.

Duff gen is pretty obviously the opposite!

[Eagle 270]

Ok, clever dick! Where does the word 'duff' come from????

[Spur Lash]

Duff

Matelots used to use it to describe their 'afters'. 'Plum duff', figgy duff'. which is old world.

You can, of course, 'come your duff'. or, indeed, be 'up the duff'.

But we can all sleep safely in our beds, from a health and safety point of view, if we always wear our 'ear duffs' to protect our hearing.

Go figure.

[spekesoftly]

Ok, clever dick! Where does the word 'duff' come from????

That's easy, comes from the old WRAF expression - "She's up the duff" :E

[BEagle]

'Duff' - defective

Figgy duff, plum duff etc all puddings from earlier times.

"Up the duff" = "In the pudding club". Colloquial expression for the state women enter 9 months before brat-crapping.

[Blacksheep]

"Gen" is an abbreviation for General Information. I don't know if you still have them these days, but we always had notice boards divided up as "Station Routine Orders" (SROs) and "General Information". Pukka is, as someone pointed out, from Imperial days in India and Duff is short for defective. Pukka Gen was thus stuff that you found posted on the notice board and therefore official (though not necessarily true) Duff Gen was misinformation circulating on the rumour mill.