Friday's 7-by-many

[Leedscot]

Never heard of choco - if it’s Australia only and slang, should it count as common?

[anona]

New to me, too, and I wasn't flooded by definitions when I searched for it, just Merriam Webster and Wikipedia. Wikipedia spells it with a capital C: "A member of the Australian Army Reserve past or present; called 'Choco' for short."

[yelnats]

"A member of the Australian Army Reserve past or present; called 'Choco' for short."

Never heard it, and would never have guessed the Army reserve meaning.

[mkenuk]

I've a vague feeling it had a (thankfully) short life as a term of racial abuse in the UK about 30 or 40 years ago, although I can't find this mentioned in any of the dictionaries I normally use.

[yelnats]

Asked my son-in-law who had been in the Aus. army reserve and he said it was the most common derogatory term for a reservist. The origin was a "chocolate soldier" i.e. "melted in the sun". He also said he was in the Army SAS ("Saturday and Sunday").

[Alan W]

Another mystery as to how this word was ever marked as common. It will be rare in future.

According to the Australian National Dictionary the word can also be written chocko, which is also acceptable in Chi, as a rare word.