I’m staying at the Ritz Carlton at Amelia island, and it’s quite nice but surprisingly nippy. A bunch of readers object to my use of “out of pocket” to mean “out of the loop,” “out in the field” or some such. For example:

When did ‘out of pocket’ stop meaning you were paying for something yourself and start meaning you would be out of touch for a while? Under the former meaning, you were taking money ‘out of pocket’. What are you taking ‘out of pocket’ that causes you to be unavailable? Wait…maybe I just figured it out.

Me: It’s funny, I’ve used the term for years to mean “off the grid” and now I’m not sure where I got into the habit. Maybe there’s military phrase I got from the movies or some such? Also, there was an HBO documentary a few years ago about pimps and hookers and one of their terms of art was “out of pocket” which meant “to defy one’s business manager sufficiently to warrant a slap across the face” as it were. Some buddies of mine and I still use the term jokingly. But that wasn’t what I had in mind, for I am — to pretty much everyone’s relief, I think — not following in Fred Garvin’s footsteps Update: Well, there you go, from a reader:

Dear Mr. Goldberg:
You are correct. The expression “out of pocket” is used by American military officers (perhaps also enlisted personnel) to indicate they are away from usual connections to other personnel. There’s a history behind that, which I don’t remember now, but you used the expression correctly. Civilians won’t usually get the idiom.
All the best