To cut a chogi, also spelled choagy or chogie, is an English slang term meaning “Let’s get out of here.” It probably stems from Korean: cheogi or jeogi means “there” (it’s opposite, yeogi, means “here”). and was picked up by U.S. soldiers during the Korean War. This is part of a complete episode.
Transcript of “Cut a Chogi”
Hello, you have A Way with Words.
Hi, this is Andre Madar calling from Indianapolis.
Hi, Andre, welcome.
What’s up? What can we do for you?
Well, I kind of thought about this when you guys were talking about the fickle finger of fate recently. It’s another bit of what I think is maybe military slang.
Okay.
My father-in-law uses this phrase to mean to take a shortcut. He says, cut a chogi. And I’m not really sure about the spelling, but he uses it to mean, you know, cut through that parking lot over there. Take a shortcut. Cut a chogi.
And why do you think it’s military?
Well, he was stationed in Southern California during the Korean conflict. And that’s where he says he picked it up.
Did he go to Korea?
No, he was in ground operations at a couple of air bases.
So you said chogi?
Chogi. Cut a chogi. I have no idea what the spelling is. To me, it sounded like it might be Mexican slang because, well, he’s right down near the Mexican border there. But I didn’t know how to spell it and couldn’t really find much online.
Well, your tip is the Korean War, the time that it happened, because it turns out that it comes from the Korean language. And the military serving in Korea picked it up there and used it in a wide variety of contexts, some meaning to hurry or to assist in a speedy way. To leave quickly, things like that. And it probably comes from a Korean phrase meaning to go there.
I see in one of my war talk dictionaries, my military slang dictionaries, that it’s listed as pronounced as shogi rather than chogi. But I could see how those pronunciations, one would blend into the other. And it’s usually spelled C-H-O-G-I. But obviously since it’s a slang term, there’s a lot of variation there. C-H-O-A-G-G-Y-G-I-E, things like that.
Right.
Wow. When I talked to him more recently, he added the definition, let’s get the hell out of here.
Yeah.
To go quickly, right?
Yeah. Let’s get out of here.
Huh. One of the earliest forms of it, it just referred to a local, a local Korean who was assisting the U.S. military in whatever they were trying to do. And one theory has it. It’s not just necessarily from that phrase meaning to go there, to go. It may actually just be when you listen to the Korean language, you think you hear the words shogi or chogi a lot. There’s a wide variety of ways that that might come up because the equivalent of the word there sounds like that. This is according to what I’m reading. I don’t actually speak Korean, so I’m taking other people’s word for it.
Got it.
So when you hear it, it sounds like a lot of yogi chogi.
Yeah, I was curious about the Mexican issue, and I was way off. I can’t think of anything that would be related to Spanish there.
Interesting.
Yeah. I’ve never heard of this. That’s really cool. There was a small amount of language that came back from the Korean War, but much of it didn’t last. A little bit, including this phrase, did last through the Vietnam War. A lot of the same people served in both conflicts. But after the Vietnam War, it now is basically a relic of history that appears in war fiction. And occasionally, people remember it from their days in the military, like your father-in-law, and keep using it.
Yeah.
Did it ever spread beyond the military?
I had never heard it before I met him.
No, no. You’ll find occasionally people will say it, but they always understand, almost always I’ve seen they’re like, yeah, I learned it from my father who was in the military. I learned it from my brother who was in the military. There’s almost always an obvious connection there.
Right.
Andre, thank you so much for calling. That’s really cool.
Thank you.
Thank you. That clears it up.
Yes, sure.
All right. Thank you. Take care.
Bye.
Bye-bye.
You know, we live in a military town. San Diego is one of the biggest military areas in the United States, and we always welcome calls from the military. If you want to talk about your language, maybe the things you learned from your father or your grandfather that are different than what you say now that you serve in the military. That stuff always amazes me. So give us a call, 877-929-9673, or send an email to words@waywordradio.org.
