totally blanking here

[lindalinda]

My son just asked me what G.I. stands for. As in Military G.I. I feel really stupid but I honestly cant think of it. Any help?

 

[JennyMominRI]

My son just asked me what G.I. stands for. As in Military G.I. I feel really stupid but I honestly cant think of it. Any help?

GI or G.I. is a term describing a US soldier, marine, airman, or sailor; or an item of their equipment. It may be used as an adjective or as a noun. The term is often thought to be an initialism of "Government Issue" but the origin of the term is in fact "Galvanized Iron" after the letters "GI" that were stamped on U.S. Army metal trash cans made from it.[1][2] During World War I, US soldiers sardonically referred to incoming German artillery shells as "GI cans". During the 1930s it was somehow assumed that GI stood for Government Issue and the term was applied to other equipment and the soldiers themselves. The term reached even farther use as its usage spread with the American troops during World War II.

Alternative interpretations include General Issue, General Infantry, Ground Infantry, General Invasion, Government Inductee, and Gastrointestinal (a reference to problems claimed to come from the poor quality of the food, probably a joke).

 

[figment52]

I always thought it stood for General Inductee - rather than an Officer or academy graduate.

 

[phorsenuf]

Here's what I found;


GI
Origin: 1917

For much of the twentieth century, GI has been the common designation for the American fighting man--or woman. However, the GI was born early in the century not as a soldier but as a trash can.

Originally the initials GI formed an abbreviation that stood for the material from which a trash can was made, galvanized iron, and its source, government issue. During World War I, when the term first came to attention in the American Expeditionary Force, GI can was the doughboys' trash talk for a German artillery shell. "After dark that night," went one account, "Fritz came over and started dropping those famous G.I. cans." And another: "We crossed the river on a span of a sunken bridge that was struck by a G.I.C." German shells were also just plain GIs, as in this 1918 poem: "There's about two million fellows, and there's some of them who lie/Where eighty-eights and G.I.'s gently drop."

Shortly before the start of World War II, the GI (for government issue, or general issue) became human. There had been GI soap, GI shoes, and GI clothes; now there was the GI soldier, soon shortened to plain GI. By the time World War II began, doughboy (1865) had been completely displaced by the more versatile GI, the term that remains in use today. And whatever the effects of GI food, the military GI has nothing to do with the gastrointestinal GI of the medical profession.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

[lindalinda]

Thanks, I had never heard those before!

 

[Cindy's Mom]

I always thought is was "general enlisted" and couldn't figure out why they spelled it GI. Not kidding either.

 

[JennyMominRI]

I always thought is was "general enlisted" and couldn't figure out why they spelled it GI. Not kidding either.

Don't feel bad,I was in the military and thought it meant *government Issued*