So I'm currently reading through Last Call at the Zero Angle and there is a small glossary of selected pilot slang. (This is all canon btw.)

Dupe: A TIE bomber

Fangs out: eager for a dogfight

Furball: a hectic dogfight

Goo: a planet's atmosphere

Hop: a mission

Impstar: an Imperial Star Destroyer

In the black: operating in space

In the blue: operating in a planetary atmosphere

Sitrep: situation report

Skull: a Z-95 Headhunter fighter

Splash: shoot down

Stiched: hit by enemy fire

Suicide sled: a starfighter with weak or no shields

Zero angle: the position behind an enemy's stern

This is just what accompanied the story in the magazine.

Most of this is from Rogue Squadron or actual fighter piloting. Having your fangs out is being aggressive. Being too aggressive is having your fangs in the floorboards, or fangs stuck in the floorboards, the idea that you're so aggressive you're putting yourself in a bad situation. Splash is the call Naval Aviators make for downing an enemy aircraft. Sitrep is common military parlance. Furball is a term for a dogfight with many planes (or ships) swirling around from real fighter piloting. In the black comes from most mil SF. Dupe and Impstar are both straight out of the Rogue Squadron novels.

Zero angle seems to me to be a misunderstanding of the "four problems of BFM.' So, the four problems of BFM are range, closure, aspect, and angle off. The easiest shot in fighter piloting is a dead six o'clock trailing shot. That would be Zero Aspect, Zero Angle Off, Zero closure, and optimal range (convergence for your guns or what have you). But you can be at Zero angle off, and 90 degree aspect, and this is one of the most difficult shots in all of fighter piloting, as it's a shot taken at maximum deflection.

I didn't say they were all brand new terms.

I didn't say that you did. Thanks for the heads-up on the story though, I will definitely give it a read.

Wait, TIE pilots last long enough to have slang?

Slang/jargon is something the human mind is able to create incredibly quickly. It's some hard-wired ability to be able to create words that help identify those of your group, which is why if you've ever taken a non-gamer friend to a game store their eyes glaze over so quickly because there's slang and shorthand for so many things it loses commonality with the commonly used parts of language.

So is "Coffin Jockey" still a canon phrase or nah?