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During the war in Iraq, military spokespeople would announce the daily number of sorties executed by the U.S. forces as part of the bombing campaign. As anyone who has spent some time in a public facility in a French-speaking area can attest, "sortie" means "exit," or more colloquially, "going out." However, in military parlance, a "sortie" is an operational flight from a military aircraft. A Yahoo! Reference search on the term resulted in two definitions: an armed attack, especially one made from a plane surrounded by enemy forces, or a flight of a combat aircraft on a mission. Using the
new Yahoo! Search and focusing on news stories, we learned that from the decks of the USS Abraham Lincoln alone, the U.S. launched over 16,500 sorties against Iraq and Afghanistan. For more information on arcane terms, military or otherwise, we refer you to the The Glossarist. This handy directory of various glossaries and topical dictionaries comes from the creator of the ever-popular Aussie Slang site.
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