Slang from WWI (UNCLASSIFIED)

[Jonathan Lighter]

Want to write about language? Get a military historian! Obviously!  Next thing, one of us will be pontificating about Spanish economic inefficiencies during the War of Jenkins's Ear.

  OED says _Panzer_, n., "a tank," is unrecorded in German before 1934. _Flak_ seems not to appear anywhere till 1938.  So forget either one as an English word of the Great War.

  "Chin-strapped"?  Not in OED or early eds. of Partridge, who served at Gallipoli and in France, as well as in Home Defence during WWII.  He does give "on one's chin-strap," but that's a bit different.

  "Recce"?  OED 1941.

  "Top-hole," adj. ? OED 1908.

  Prof. Caddick-Adams admits that "goggle-eyed" is a lot older than 1914. So what's the point?

  "Plonk" :  the OED date is 1933, with no WWI connection.  Good guesss, though.

  While "strafe" has indeed narrowed to refer almost exclusively to air-to-ground machine-gunning, but during 1914-18 it was a more inclusive synonym for "to shoot at or bombard" anything heavily from anywhere.

  Why associate "Fritz" with Frederick the Great?  Because it's more fun, that's why.

  And what, no "camouflage" ? (OED 1917).

  JL

  "Mullins, Bill AMRDEC" <Bill.Mullins at US.ARMY.MIL> wrote:
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Sender: American Dialect Society
Poster: "Mullins, Bill AMRDEC"
Subject: Slang from WWI (UNCLASSIFIED)
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Classification: UNCLASSIFIED
Caveats: NONE

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/7106376.stm
Classification: UNCLASSIFIED
Caveats: NONE

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