German Words 1939-45
Laurence Horn
laurence.horn at YALE.EDU
Fri May 2 14:20:40 UTC 2003
At 9:58 PM -0400 5/1/03, Fred Shapiro wrote:
>On Thu, 1 May 2003, Ray Villegas wrote:
>
>> In reseaching the German word "flak" I found that it is an acronym
>> "Flugabwehrkannone"=Air Defense Gun. I have found that there is another
>> spelling for it as well which is "FLiegerAbwehrKanonen." It was used in
>> Germany first during WWII, 1926, and then again in 1939.
>
>The 1926 war must have been WW1.5.
Hah. The first English cite in the OED is from Jane's Fighting
Ships, 1938, and the etymology is given there as <
Fliegerabwehrkanone 'pilot-defence gun'. That still predates WWII
slightly.
>
>> There is another acronym that was popular as well. FUBAR which comes from
>> combining foo and bar and was used by the GIs in WWII meaning F.U Beyond
>> All Repair.( I will leave the meaning of the first part to the
>> imagination). It is derived from the German word "furchtbar" which means
>> terrible. It is considered to be a backronym.
>
>Is there any evidence for the backronymic etymology?
>
Seems unlikely, given the range of military acronyms related to it,
e.g. "SNAFU", which don't lend themselves to German etymologies.
Jesse has a bunch of these in his _The F Word_.
Larry
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