The Etymologicon: A Circular Stroll through the Hidden Connections of the English Language

Terminators and Prejudice

The termination is the end. That’s because the Latin terminus meant boundary or limit, from which we get bus terminals, terms and conditions, fixed-term parliaments and indeed many terms for things (because a term has a limited meaning).

From that you get the idea of terminating somebody’s employment. Legally speaking, you can do this in one of two ways: you can terminate without prejudice, meaning that you are open to the idea of re-employing the poor chap; or you can terminate with prejudice, meaning that you will never hire the scoundrel again. The latter is for employees who have done something awfully naughty and broken and betrayed your trust.

The CIA employs agents. If you break the CIA’s trust and reveal their secrets to the Other Side, your employment will be terminated. Indeed, it will be terminated with prejudice. Indeed, the CIA often makes sure that nobody ever employs you again by the simple expedient of creeping up behind you and shooting you in the head. This they jokingly refer to as termination with extreme prejudice.

The CIA being awfully secret, it’s hard to say exactly when the phrase terminate with extreme prejudice was invented. That it was revealed to the general public at all, was the fault of the US Army Special Forces: the Green Berets.

In 1969 a Vietnamese fellow called Thai Khac Chuyen was working as an agent or informer for the Green Berets (or possibly the CIA, or both). However, he was also working for the Viet Cong and when the Green Berets discovered this they became a little bit peeved.

They went (or didn’t go, depending on whom you believe) to the CIA for advice on what to do about Chuyen. The CIA told the Green Berets to let bygones be bygones and to try to see it from the other chap’s point of view, or at least that’s what the CIA claim.

The Green Berets, on the other hand, say that the CIA told them that Chuyen (or his contract) should be terminated with extreme prejudice.

Exactly who said what is no longer of interest to Thai Khac Chuyen, as the upshot of the story is that he was shot. Eight Green Berets were arrested over the affair and, in the brouhaha and court martial that followed, the CIA joke about contract law was finally brought out into the open.

It was this incident that took the innocent word terminate away from contract law and bus depots and got it a part in the movies. First, there was a mention in Apocalypse Now (1979), where the hero is sent off to find Colonel Kurtz and terminate him with extreme prejudice. Soon, terminate was so sturdily established in the public mind as a big, tough, scary synonym for ‘kill’ that in 1984 James Cameron decided to call his big, tough, scary killer-robot The Terminator.