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Glite Dictionary
sick parade

sick parade

8.2
A daily military meeting where soldiers report illnesses to a doctor
  • noun
  • Jargon
translation icon : desfile de enfermos
  • During the sick parade, soldiers must report any health issues to receive treatment.

Examples

  • Are you reporting for sick parade, sergeant?

    Von Ryan's Express (1965)

  • Every morning, the unit gathers for sick parade to account for personnel feeling unwell.

  • The troops lined up for the daily sick parade to see the medical officer.

Synonyms

sick call
vssick parade
  • Jargon
1 5.7

A set time when soldiers report to a medic if ill

is a daily assembled session for personnel to report illness

Surface Forms

sick parade singular
sick parades plural

Morphology

sick + parade

The constituents 'sick' (ill) and 'parade' (an assembly or formal gathering) readily suggest an assembly of sick people, so a learner would likely infer it's a gathering related to illness. However, the specific institutional/military procedure sense (a routine daily report to a medical officer) and register are specialized and not fully predictable from the words alone, so it is only partially transparent.

Etymology

Sick parade comes from army life. Each morning soldiers who felt sick would stand in a parade as a neat line to be checked by the medic, so the phrase came to mean the daily military time to 'report' illness.