Major Antedating of "Cold War"

[Fred Shapiro]

The term "cold war" is commonly said (in Safire's New Political
Dictionary, for example) to have been introduced by Bernard Baruch in a
1947 speech ghosted by Herbert Bayard Swope.  Sources propounding this
assertion neglect the fact that the OED has a 1945 usage by George Orwell.

I have now found a much earlier example, earlier than any possible
unpublished usage by Swope:

1938 _Nation_ 26 Mar. 345  (heading) Hitler's Cold War.


Fred Shapiro


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Fred R. Shapiro                             Editor
Associate Librarian for Public Services     YALE DICTIONARY OF QUOTATIONS
  and Lecturer in Legal Research            Yale University Press,
Yale Law School                             forthcoming
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