AWOL

[AAllan at AOL.COM]

"America in So Many Words" (by Barnhart & Metcalf, Houghton Mifflin 1997)
arbitrarily placed "AWOL" in 1863 not because of a specific citation for that
date but because Mencken among others told the story of the Civil War use.

This is what "ASMW" has to say about "AWOL":

<<1863 AWOL

Americans on both sides in the Civil War sometimes skedaddled (1861, a
Northern term), not only from the battlefield but from their assigned posts.
The phrase absent without leave was used to designate those who were gone for
a relatively short time, as opposed to permanent deserters. In the Army of
the Confederacy, such soldiers were punished by being draped with a sign
bearing the initials A.W.O.L. to signify their crime, that is, absent without
leave.

At first A.W.O.L. was pronounced letter by letter. This is evident in the
humorous World War I variant A.W.O. Loose, meaning the same thing as A.W.O.L.
By the start of World War II, however, the pronunciation had changed to AY
wall, as if the initials constituted one word rather than an abbreviation.
Humorously contrived attributions of the letters in World War II included "A
Wolf On the Loose" and "After Women Or Liquor." In our century [that would be
the 20th back then], it has also been possible to be A.W.O.L. from a pursuit
in civilian life.>>

My abbreviated notes on sources: <<HDofAmSl, Dickson (War Slang), OxDofMSl,
Barnhart DofAB, AmSing; OED2, DA, DAE have no citations before the 1920s, but
Flexner Hear has the Civil War story. DA cites Mencken supplement I for the
same story.>>

The earliest citation in the Historical Dictionary of American Slang is 1920
for "A.W.O. Loose." AWOL is not an entry in HDAS because it's not slang.

Maybe the Civil War story is just a story. Barry?

- Allan Metcalf