From the Big Lebowski movie: "Your wheel! At fifteen em-pee-aitch I roll out! I double back, grab one of 'em and beat it out of him! The uzi!".
I assume that's some kind of military slang?
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I suspect you heard this rather then read it (unless it was an English subtitle)– user19179Commented Mar 25, 2020 at 17:48
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@GWarner actually, it was a loud scene so i didn't make out anything the character said, so i read the script for the movie, the part that i quoted in the post. And i haven't ever encountered phoneticals for letters written like that before so it didn't occur to me. I think in the dialogue i wouldve spotted it, but since it was a loud scene i couldnt make it out– Nick The DickCommented Mar 25, 2020 at 18:34
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2 Answers
em pee aitch = MPH or Miles per hour. These are the usual units to measure speed of a vehicle in the US or UK.
15 mph is about 25 km/h
It is not military slang, it is the usual abbreviation.
It‘s 15mph, with the letters spelled out, which stands for miles per hour. In metric units, 24.14 km/h.
Any American knows how fast mph is but probably not km/h because all the road signs are in mph.
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It's roughly 8 km to 5 miles; Brits, being closer to the continent, often remember a few standard ones like 80 km = 50 miles, then you can get all the multiples of 10 by very simple mental arithmetic. 10 km = a shade less than 6.25 miles, so there you go. Railfans probably remember that 200 km/h = 125 mph and 300 km/h is 186 mph, as these are common running speeds for high speed trains in the UK and on the continent. Commented Mar 25, 2020 at 18:51
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@MichaelHarvey It’s just extremely rare to need to convert between miles and km in my experience, so I just Google it if I need to know. I think I’m pretty typical of Americans in this regard. The only place I routinely see km where it would be more helpful to see miles is Pokémon GO :p– Laurel ♦Commented Mar 25, 2020 at 20:32
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When Britain went partly metric in the early 1970s, the government broadcast some informational ads on TV, including one with a jingle that went "It's easy, you see, a metre is three foot three" which I still rely on mentally. Commented Mar 25, 2020 at 20:48