Meaning
Completely satisfactory; loud, clear, and working well. Recognisable but less common outside radio or pop-culture contexts Regional use: United States military and aerospace, later general slang.
Origin
World War II U.S. military radio jargon. Operators rated signal strength and readability on scales from one to five, so a transmission that was five by five received the top mark on both measures. The wording is printed in a 1946 Marine Corps account of wartime events and broadened into all is well, helped by military service and the U.S. space programme.
Research Sources
References used to check this entry’s meaning, history, or documented forms.
Variants
- 5 by 5
- five-by-five
Usage Examples
- Base, this is Ridge Team; your signal is five by five.
- The generator is steady, the pumps are running, and everything is five by five.