Abstract

English War Slang
Berrey, Lester V. | November 9, 1940 issue

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War is notoriously a fertile hotbed of slang. When men are transplanted en masse from their accustomed mode of life into a strange environment and given unfamiliar tasks, they need a new vocabulary to describe unfamiliar activities and objects. The War Department may be somewhat dilatory, but the verbal arsenal is always full of shot and shell. The first crop of war slang has naturally not been fully garnered, although H.L. Mencken in the journal "Reader's Digest" has already assembled some of the choicest items. The prolific coinages of the First World War have not been sufficient. With the technique of warfare radically different, armies no longer use chiefly the language of trenches but that of the air.

See Also:

SLANG; WAR; WORLD War, 1914-1918; MILITARY art & science; LANGUAGE & languages; READER'S Digest (Periodical); MENCKEN, H. L. (Henry Louis), 1880-1956
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