That’s it.
What’s the use of the phrase? I’ve never come across it.
Context?
Sun bathing? Cooking? Sexual attraction? Road rage?
I don’t know about Johnny L.A., but in the restaurant biz, “turning and burning” refers to getting a customer in, fed, and then getting them to leave as fast as possible.
I’ve heard it in two contexts dealing with fighter planes - in an old mmo aerial combat game I played, people would refer to “turn and burn” as a style of fighting where the engines were maxed out and the maximum turn rate was used as the two planes pushed the capabilities of their aircraft to get behind the other.
I’ve also seen it used in a more modern context with jets with afterburners. When you needed to disengage from something and get out of there fast (for example if you’d expended all your ordnance) you’d turn and burn - turn towards your escape route and kick on your afterburners.
I know about turn or burn as in become a christian or go to hell. Pretty much frowned upon in most christian organisations I have been a part of.
The other way around, it’s used in stud poker when dealing out new cards. You “burn one” i.e. deal it face down, a discard, then you “turn one” dealing the next face up.
I thought is was a description about starting up turbine engines. First, spin them up (turn), then light the fire to get them burning.
Same here.
‘Let’s move!’ ‘Work faster and more legibly!’ ‘Get on the ball!’
This fits the idea that I had. I also considered (nod to dynamitedave) a WWII origin where a pilot would ‘turn’ the prop (start the engine) and ‘burn’ down the runway (take off quickly, ‘burn rubber’ in a car analogy).
My dad used ‘turn and burn’. He was Combat Aircrew in an AD-4 during Korea. He also used to say, ‘Kick the tire, light the fire, and go!’ Growing up around airplanes, I took this to mean ‘Do a cursory preflight, start the engine, and take off.’ (i.e. ‘Let’s get this show on the road!’, another thing he used to say. Later I figured out it could be a car analogy, as people used to kick the tires.) ‘Kick the tire, light the fire, and go!’ has a different meaning from ‘turn and burn’. As dad used them, the former indicated a desire to leave quickly, and the latter seemed to be used in a situation already in progress or an expectation of work to be done.
It’s used in that sense in Top Gun.
This article about the A-7 Corsair uses it to refer to a 7-g turn, which I assume would require the pilot to turn the plane with the afterburners running.
In poker, it is burn and turn, you are essentially discarding the top card to prevent any advantage a player may have received by being flashed (shown) the card. It is hard to flash the second card. Therefore, the purpose is to insure the integrity of the game.
“Turn and burn” is probably “the whole nine yards” all over again.
My wager is on “not conclusively traceable in print to any one specific thing, just a bit of rhyming slang”.
By far the most common meaning of “turn and burn” is what Johnny L.A. gives in post #10. It’s used mostly in situations where the work to be “turned and burned” comes in discrete chunks - waiting tables at a restaurant, a stack of forms on a desk, pieces of software code, etc.
As far as the origin, do you mean where I quoted SenorBeef? (i.e., turn the aircraft and leave quickly.) Or to start the engine and take off quickly?
I’d heard it used sarcastically when referring to the B36 Peacemaker strategic bomber which had a combination of props and jets. I met a fellow years ago who flew them back in the day and he had the same joke which was something like this (from Wikipedia):
“If all engines function normally at full power during the pre-takeoff warm-up, the lead flight engineer will sometimes say to the AC (Aircraft Commander), ‘six turning and four burning.’ Erratic reliability led to the wisecrack, ‘two turning, two burning, two joking, and two smoking, with two engines not accounted for.’”
Not origin – I suspect that the origins of the phrase are undiscernable through printed sources. There will be many verbal anecdotes, of course.
I was referring to this phrase of yours when someone upstream wanted to know what the phrase meant and in what context it was used:
‘Let’s move!’ ‘Work faster and more legibly!’ ‘Get on the ball!’
I’ve only heard it in context of fighters.
After popping chaff you want to alter your speed and direction so the missile radar seeker does not reacquire you - hence Turn and Burn means get the hell out of Dodge.