S.O.S. guess

Posted by TheFallen on April 10, 2002

In Reply to: What is "Our S.O.S"? posted by julie on April 10, 2002

: What does this phrase mean?

It's hard to tell without a little more context. S.O.S., standing for Save Our Souls, is an internationally recognised distress call, used particularly by the crew of ships or aeroplanes, when they fear they are about to sink or crash, and when normal voice communications are impossible - otherwise they'd probably use "Mayday", (from "m'aidez", "help me" in French).

To send an S.O.S. code with a flashlight for example, one would make three short flashes, then three long ones, then three short ones again. You could do the same with sound, using short taps and long ones if unfortunate enough to be trapped inside the hull of a ship, or something. The S.O.S. code comes straight from the days of Morse Code, where I suppose it was felt that transmitting an "S" (... or dit dit dit), followed by an O (--- or dah dah dah), followed by a final "S", was both easily achieved and more importantly easily recognisable.

Getting back to "our S.O.S.", without any further context to go on, I'd guess it means our desperate plea for help.

• SOS SSS CDQ ESC 04/10/02
  • SOS SSS CQD ESC 04/10/02