A hundred years ago this month, the First World War began. At the time, of course, it wasn’t seen as the First World War or World War I — those phrases emerged a generation later, when Adolf Hitler had plunged Europe into a second terrible conflict. Not long after the first soldiers died in 1914, the phrase “Great War” came into use — an article in the Canadian magazine Maclean’s may have been its initial appearance. The war was, indeed, great in terms of loss, waste, futility, general stupidity, and generals’ stupidity. But it also provided a gift to language. Dozens of expressions that are now widespread were born during the conflict.
One of them, surprisingly, is “D-Day.” Long before the triumphant attack against Nazi forces on the beaches of Normandy in 1944, the phrase was used in the First World War as a code name for the day on which a particular operation would begin. “The First Army will attack at H-hour on D-Day,” announced a field order of the Allied Expeditionary Force in September 1918. The initial D had no particular meaning except, I suppose, to make the day sound important. “War bride” is another expression we often associate with the Hitler war; it, too, can be traced back to 1918. “Atomic bombs” had arrived in the language, though not the battlefield, as early as 1914.
When we imagine the conflict today, the scene that most often comes to mind involves the endless trenches scarring the landscapes of Belgium and northern France. This was the origin of “trench coat,” an item of clothing that nowadays is seldom linked to wartime uniforms. But it was, initially, a padded waterproof overcoat worn by a British officer, and the term was first recorded late in 1914. “Camouflage,” a very rare word before the war, became a common one during it. As for “tank,” in 1916 the Times of London struggled to define the word for its readers: “‘Tanks’ is what these new machines are generally called, and the name has the evident official advantage of being quite undescriptive.”
By then, doctors had begun to realize that many soldiers had suffered terrible emotional damage from the constant pounding of artillery among the rat-filled trenches and the barbed wire; hence the birth of the phrase “shell shock.” Those who endured shell shock may also have faced “mustard gas” and “bombers” — both of them new expressions. The phrase “basket case” also appeared during the war, with a gruesome meaning: a soldier who had suffered the amputation of all four limbs, and had to be carried in a large basket.
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- Words of war written by women
- Great books on the origins of the Great War
- Leuven’s legacy: Century after razing of Belgian library, cultural destruction a wartime norm
As long as the conflict lasted, Germans were vilified throughout the British Empire. The rhetoric of soldiers’ slang suggests the depth of their scorn and fear. “Huns,” for example, had always referred to an Asian people who swept into Eastern Europe centuries earlier; but now, any German was a Hun. Jerry, Kraut, Bosch and Fritz — all of them contemptuous names for German soldiers — also emerged during the First World War. So did “Spanish flu,” although wherever the devastating epidemic of 1918-19 actually began (China, France, the United States and Austria have all been suggested), Spain had nothing to do with it.
The dislike of the enemy was so intense, even dogs weren’t exempt. One large breed had long been known in this language as “German shepherd;” in 1917, the British renamed it “Alsatian.” The animal did not come from the Alsace region, but Alsace had the distinct advantage of belonging to Britain’s ally, France. In southern Ontario, the city of Berlin had existed for more than 50 years — but the war made it unacceptable for a Canadian municipality to bear a German name and so, in 1916, Berlin turned into Kitchener.
The war finally ended on Nov. 11, 1918, with an “armistice,” a term that has faded since. The day after peace broke out, the Times of London declared: “The ‘Cease Fire’ of yesterday must be final and universal.” This was apparently the first occasion on which ceasefire — previously a military word, a command to stop shooting — took on a political meaning. Today we speak regularly of ceasefires, often in a metaphorical sense. But as events in Syria, Iraq, Nigeria, Afghanistan and many other countries show, a final and universal ceasefire remains a distant dream.