[Ads-l] armistice

[Wilson Gray]

> So I and every kid I knew thought "armistice" meant 'the end of > a war.'

Are you saying, then, that that's *not* what it means?! ;-)

On Sun, Jul 30, 2017 at 5:40 PM, Jonathan Lighter <wuxxmupp2000 at gmail.com>
wrote:

> When I was a lad, we had "Armistice Day" to commemorate the end of World
> War I.
>
> So I and every kid I knew thought "armistice" meant 'the end of a war.'
>
> Some people still think so:
>
> 1990 John Robert Paris _The Great Combat Pictures_ (Metuchen, N.J.:
> Scarecrow Press) 287: MURPHY'S WAR...Murphy is a...mechanic aboard and
> armed British merchantman vessel [sic] sunk...in the closing months of
> World War II. ...Even after the armistice is declared he continues his
> driven efforts to destroy the U-boat.
>
> (I've seen the movie, and it is indeed about WW2.)
>
> PS: In the United States, WW1 was almost *never* called the "Great War,"
> though that seems to be the preferred designation nowadays (perhaps thanks
> to Paul Fussell - who incidentally didn't write about Americans in the
> war).
>
> It was called the "World War."  That's why there have been two of them
> instead of just the one from 1939-45.
>
> JL
>
> JL
>
> --
> "If the truth is half as bad as I think it is, you can't handle the truth."
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>



-- 
-Wilson
-----
All say, "How hard it is that we have to die!"---a strange complaint to
come from the mouths of people who have had to live.
-Mark Twain

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org