big antedating of "Hun" = 'German.'

[Jonathan Lighter]

OED, like HDAS,  dates this name for militaristic Germans to the years
after 1900. It may have been popularized by Kipling.

Surprisingly, however, both HDAS and OED missed an earlier, albeit poetic,
appearance in one of the best-known poems of the nineteenth century, Thomas
Campbell's "Hohenlinden" (1800):

'Tis morn; but scarce yon level sun
Can pierce the war-clouds, rolling dun,
Where furious Frank and fiery Hun
       Shout in their sulphurous canopy.

Hohenlinden was fought near Munich in December, 1800, between the imperial
forces of Napoleon and those of the Holy Roman Emperor Franz I, of the
House of Habsburg. Franz's army was composed of Austrians and Bavarians.

JL
--
"If the truth is half as bad as I think it is, you can't handle the truth."

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