One of the stranger moments in a confirmation hearing on Tuesday for Pete Hegseth, President-elect Donald J. Trump’s pick to lead the Pentagon, was when a senator asked the former Fox News host to define the word “jagoff.”
The question from Senator Jack Reed, Democrat of Rhode Island and the ranking member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, was prompted by a comment that Mr. Hegseth made to his military platoon, as he wrote in his 2024 book, “The War on Warriors.” He made the comment during his Iraq deployment in 2005 after hearing a presentation by a JAG officer, or a member of the U.S. Army Judge Advocate General’s Corps, who defend Army soldiers in legal matters.
After he and his team were briefed by the JAG officer on the proper protocols for firing on an enemy with a rocket-propelled grenade, Mr. Hegseth disparaged one of the rules of engagement, saying it was “going to get people killed,” he recalled in his book.
During the hearing on Tuesday, Mr. Hegseth, at first, declined to define the slang term with a slight smile. “I don’t need to, sir,” he said. “The men and women watching understand.”
When pressed, Mr. Hegseth ultimately said “it would be a JAG officer who puts his or her own priorities in front of the war fighters, their promotions, their medals, in front of having the backs of those making the tough calls on the front lines.”
Mr. Reed implied that Mr. Hegseth was being disrespectful when calling JAG officers the slang term. “How will you be able to effectively lead a military in which one of the principal elements is discipline, respect for lawful authority?” Mr. Reed asked.
The word “jagoff” — rooted in an unmistakably sexual definition, a blurring of a more lurid term — has expanded to become a catch-all insult for someone who is annoying or otherwise unfavorable. But the meaning has regional contexts, too. In western Pennsylvania, it can be used to dismiss someone for their irritating behavior — or to embrace them with a sarcastic but affectionate compliment.
In Chicago — and elsewhere — it is often used as a mild insult.
“Hey, jagoff! You just blew through a stop sign,” the writer Edward McClelland recalled of a 2019 incident at an intersection in the Windy City. He subtitled his story with a tongue-in-cheek boast: “Pittsburgh may have invented the term, but Chicago perfected it.”
