chief

   In A Dictionary of Sailor’s Slang, by Wilfred Granville, we are told that ‘Chief is used as a less formal mode of address by an officer to a Chief Petty Officer. Chiefy is most used on the lower deck.’ ‘Chief’ might also be used by a British politician to his Chief Whip, as Maurice Edelmann illustrates in his novel The Minister. ‘Tell me, Chief, have you spoken to Armstrong?’ In the USA a chief of police is likely to be addressed by this term. It may also occur more generally, used to someone who is in a senior position, as the boss, but does not necessarily have ‘chief’ as part of his official title. Thus the new salesman who works for Babbitt in Sinclair Lewis’s novel of that name tells him: ‘By golly, chief, say, that’s great.’ ‘Chief’ is also used in a vaguely flattering way by one man to another, e.g. by a taxidriver to a customer or by a man asking a stranger for money. The speaker in such cases would always be working-class and male. A special use of ‘chief’ survives in innumerable western films and children’s games, as well as on North American Indian reservations, where the leader of an Indian tribe is addressed by this traditional title. An ad hoc use of the term is seen in Moviola, by Garson Kanin. A woman begins to give her male companion instructions about following another car. He replies: ‘Okay, Chief.’ In War Brides, by Lois Battle, ‘Thanks, Chief’ is said by an American prostitute to a prospective client. She also addresses him as ‘handsome’.