■ NEW WORDS SELF-DEFINED mmmmmmtmmmmmmmmmmmaum CALPHONSO SiMITH NEW WORDS SELF-DEFINED NEW WORDS SELF-DEFINED Toute epoque a ses idees propres; il faut qu'elle ait aussi les mots propres a ces idees . — Victor Hugo, Preface to Cromwell BY C. ALPHONSO SMITH, ph.d.,ll.d.,l.h.d Author of, "Studies in English Syntax," "The American Short Story," "What Can Literature Do For Me?" "0. Henry Biography," Etc. Head of the Department of English in the U. S Naval Academy, Annapolis, Md. GARDEN CITY NEW YORK DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY 1919 COPYRIGHT, 1919, BY DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY ALL RIGHTS RESERVED, INCLUDING THAT OP TRANSLATION INTO FOREIGN LANGUAGES, INCLUDING THE SCANDINAVIAN 3 16 89 ^ 1 Sl»- + TO MY WIFE Without whose interest there would have been less pleasure in compiling this book, and with- out whose aid there would have been less hope that the compilation would be worth while. ! 1 55 n CO CO 40SG78 PREFACE This book is both less and more than a dictionary. It is less than a dictionary in containing not one formal definition; it is more than a dictionary in its attempt to quote only such sentences as make the meaning of each word stand self-revealed. It is one thing to memorize a definition, quite another to add the word defined at once to your vocabulary of actual use. The sentences here culled will, I believe, enable the reader to take each word or phrase by its handle and to use it, if he so desires. If he does not care to make personal use of these words, it should be remembered that most of them have found their way since 1914 into so many short stories, sketches, novels, news columns, and magazine contributions that a reading knowledge of them is essential to a proper understand- ing of current writing. They are not all new words, of course; but, when not new, they have at least been called into newness of service or represent new direc- tions of popular interest or scientific research. They have, therefore, it is hoped, a value as material of history apart from their service to the student of language or their more immediate service to the general reader. It is a pleasure to record the cooperation of the midshipmen in the pursuit of some of the more elu- viii PREFACE sive of these words. I could at least never have "wangled" my way through all the difficulties pre- sented had it not been for the efficient assistance of midshipmen U. P. Bern, R. E. Blick, Jr., John P. Cady, W. P. Cogswell, W. H. Crew, J. A. Hollowell, Jr., D. H. Johnston, T. H. Kehoe, H. D. Krick, E. J. Long, E. P. Montgomery, J. F. Morgan, J. E. Mur- phy, F.W.Rowe, Jr., Roswell P. Russell, George McW. Sturgeon, Jr., and Archie Tolk. C. Alphonso Smith. Annapolis, Md. NEW WORDS SELF-DEFINED NEW WORDS SELF-DEFINED ACE When a pilot has accounted for five Boches he is men- tioned by name in the official communication, and is spoken of as an "Ace," which in French aerial slang means a super-pilot. Papers are allowed to call an "ace" by name, print his picture, and give him a write-up. The successful aviator becomes a national hero. — James R. McConnell, Flying for France (1916). Paris, Nov. 16. — Six new victories over German air- planes were gained during the late fighting in the Aisne region by Lieut. Rene Fonck, ace of aces of all the belligerent powers, with 75 airplanes officially de- stroyed, plus 40 probable victories. — Paul Ayres Rockwell, Evening Sun, Baltimore, Md., Nov. 16, 1918. ADDICT Estimating the average individual consumption of tea- drinkers to be two-fifths of an ounce per diem, the total number of tea-drinkers in the United States is about 4 NEW WORDS SELF-DEFINED 16,000,000, an army of drug addicts whose number is increased annually by the addition of 425,000 new recruits. — Good Health, Battle Creek, Mich., February, 1919. Transformed mentally and physically, a former mor- phine addict, who escaped a week ago to-day from the detention quarters at Bay View, where she was under treatment, was escorted into Part I, of the Criminal Court, where Judge Heuisler was presiding yesterday afternoon, by Headquarters Detectives Porter and Quirk. Baltimore Sun, March 21, 1919. AERY I am ambitious to add a victory word to the English language, a short, pithy, appropriate name for our magnificent Air Service. . . . The name, there- fore, of the Service as a whole should be analogous to that of the Army and Navy, which covers all our land or sea forces, and I submit no better word can be suggested than AERY, a word of four letters ending in Y as in Army and Navy, and formed from their Latin derivatives. Anna = Arms, whence Army. Navis = Ship, whence Navy. Aer=Air, whence Aery. I commend this idea to favourable and discriminating discussion. We already have the words aerodrome, aeroplane, aerial, etc. — Edwin de Lisle, Saturday Review, London, Dec. 14, 1918. NEW WORDS SELF-DEFINED 5 AIRMAN Flying is ideal work for sailors. Therefore the whole tradition of the British nation, with its great sea his- tory, tends to produce fine airmen. — Air Power (1917), by Claude Graham- White and Harry Harper, p 18. AIRNAT Paris, Sept. 28. — "Airnats" will take its place beside "poilus" and "Yanks" if the world will accept the result of an appeal made by The Plane News, the organ of the American Air Service, for suggestions for the best nickname for fighters in the air service. A Matin reporter, who visited the camp just after the selection was made, hails the name as "clear, light, and neat," but he misses some of its aptness, as he says "the name has no particular signification, being an abbreviation of aeronauts." — N.Y. Times, Sept. 29, 1918. AIR PORT The first "air port" ever established will be constructed at Atlantic City, N. J., in connection with the second Pan-American Aeronautical Exposition and Conven- tion, to be held there next month, according to plans just announced by the Aerial League of America through its Secretary, Augustus Post. . . . "The air port will be operated exactly as seaports are oper- ated," added Mr. Post. "The aircraft starting from this port will be registered under the rules of the Air- craft Inspection Service of the Department of Com- 6 NEW WORDS SELF-DEFINED merce, and will have clearance papers, just like any other commercial vessel. The air port itself will be a terminal for transatlantic air liners, whether of the seaplane, land airplane, or dirigible type. Supplies for these craft and shops for their repairs will be estab- lished."— N. Y. Times, April 13, 1919. ALERTE In the French Army the bugle sound equivalent to the " Disperse" is called Berloque. . . . In the agglomer- ation of Paris and in all places subject to raids where troops are stationed, buglers are detailed, who divide up the town and blow lustily the Alerte and the Ber- loque when the occasion requires it. Sometimes the Berloque is followed by the Alerte again, when there are two raids in one night in rapid succession. — Army and Navy Gazette, London, September 14, 1918. It was also true that Mile. Marguerite always dropped the dish she was passing when the "alerte" sounded the air raid warning. — Marion B. Cothren, N. Y. Times Magazine, March 2, 1919. ALLYMAN See Jerry. AMALGAM Sectors of "amalgam" is the name bestowed by the French on those parts of the long Western battle-front where American soldiers are mingled, principally NEW WORDS SELF-DEFINED 7 for training purposes, with veteran French troops. . . Writing from Alsace to the Newark News, Cecil I. Dorrian describes the actual operation of the "Amal- gams.". . . He explains: I have been down on this front for a week and have seen one of these "amalgams" at work all the way from its back country of reserve and supply right up to the jumping-off place between us and them, to that species of vacuum known as "No Man's Land" or the "Pa//.s de la Lune," according to what language you speak. (I don't know what the Germans call it; "Kein Durch- gang," perhaps!) The way our troops and the French w r ork together is one of the pleasant features of the war. — Literary Digest, Sept. 21, 1918. AMERICA FIRST So that I am not speaking in a selfish spirit when I say that our whole duty for the present, at any rate, is summed up in this motto, "America first." Let us think of America before we think of Europe, in order that America may be fit to be Europe's friend when the day of tested friendship comes. — President Wilson, New York, April 20, 1915. AMERICAN TISSOT MASK Not a case is on record of an American soldier who has fallen victim of a gas attack when protected by the 8 NEW WORDS SELF-DEFINED American mouthpiece type of mask. Recently produc- tion has commenced on the American Tissot mask, an adaptation of the French type, which, while equally effective, affords the wearer greater comfort than in the case of the mouthpiece mask by enabling him to breathe both through the nose and the mouth. — Annual Re- port of the Secretary of War (1918). AMERIND* The earliest Americanisms are now an integral part of the English language, being such as "sachem," "wam- pum," and "squaw," all terms derived from the Amer- ind inhabitants. — Athenaeum, London, Feb. 13, 1918. ANDREW Enough has been said, however, to show what a variety of different unofficial terms are used on board His Majesty's ships, but those we have mentioned are only a tithe of those which are heard every day in "Andrew," as the bluejacket calls the Navy. — "Taffrail," Carry On! (1916). ANZAC The word "Anzac" was coined at Gallipoli. It was formed from the capital letters in the words Australian and New Zealand Army Corps. The beach where the *The word is of course a fusion of American and Itidian. In The North Americana of Yesterday (4th. ed. 191G) by Frederick S. Dellenbaugh, Amerind is consistently used instead of Indian or Redslcin. NEW WORDS SELF-DEFINED 9 first precarious foothold on Gallipoli was secured by the British was named Anzac Cove. There the book * was written and illustrated. — Literary Digest, Sept. 23, 1916. APRON AND FESTOON It was what is called a four line "apron and festoon" fence. Four lines of parallel posts sticking out of the ground some four feet were first driven, and then, to these post rows, four barbed wires were loosely strung. Then diagonal wires from the top of one post to the bottom of another were put on. Then the "apron wires" were laid from one post line to another, zig- zagging loosely across, for a tight wire is easily snipped by a wire cutter. Then in the nest of crossing wires, formed by the aprons between the post rows, the curly "festoons" were flung all loosely and without order as they reeled off the wire spools; and if a soldier jumped the first line he landed in a tangle out of which he must jump or straddle to another, and after that another; and if he cut the first wires he had to crawl on and dissect the second and third, leaving dozens of barbed and twisting ends to trap and tangle in a fellow's pack and coat and weapons. — Charles Tenney Jackson, American Boy, March, 1918. ARCHIE, ARCHIBALD Sir, — In reading Major Bishop's book "Winged War- fare" I was interested to see that he stated therein that 'The Anzac Book, edited by Captain C. E. W. Beau. 10 NEW WORDS SELF-DEFINED lie was unaware of the origin of the term "Archie," denoting anti-aircraft guns. Possibly its origin has been lost in the "mists of antiquity," but so far as my memory serves me, the term "Archie" was derived from the catchwords "Archibald, certainly not!" which were rife amongst the men of the original B. E. F., as applied to the singularly ineffectual efforts of anti- aircraft guns — both our own and the enemy's — of that period to combat the activities of aeroplanes. This may be of interest to your readers, as I have found that it is a frequent subject of discussion. — I am Sir. — c< 1914"— Spectator, London, Sept. 7, 1918. Suddenly whack, whack, whack, came a line of little puffs of smoke behind it, and then one in front of it, which meant that our anti-aircraft guns were having a go at it. Then, as suddenly, Archibald stopped, and we could see the British machine buzzing across the path of the German. — H. G. Wells, Mr. Britling Sees It Through (1916). Came down one time after being Archied (that's what we call the Germans anti-aircraft guns) pretty heavy and found two tears in fuselage from exploding shrap- nel, but a miss is as good as a mile you know; when the Archies open up on us we immediately start maneuvering and do all the tricks that are possible with the plane in order to give the Boche a poor target. — Lieut. Jas. J. Sykes, State Journal, Raleigh, N. C, Sept. 13, 1918. NEW WORDS SELF-DEFINED 11 ARGON Secretary Roosevelt authorizes the following: The important part played by the Navy during the war in the production of helium, the balloon gas which dur- ing hostilities was camouflaged as argon, is given in detail in a memorandum prepared by the Bureau of Steam Engineering. In view of the fact that in recent articles on this subject, both in technical journals and the daily press, the Navy's work has been largely ig- nored, the department makes public the following: SOLVED THE ZEPPELIN PROBLEM Since helium is noninflammable, an observation or dirigible balloon filled with it can not be destroyed by incendiary bullets. The only effective method of attack would be by driving an airplane bodily through the great gas bag. With the fire risk eliminated, the rigid airship or Zeppelin will hence be one of the most powerful weapons known. — Official U. S. Bulletin, Washington, D. C, March 18, 1919. AS The French, always so quick to give things names — and so liberal about it that, to the embarrassment and undoing of the unhappy foreigner, they sometimes in- vent fifty names for one thing — have added so many words to the vocabulary since August, 1914, that a glossary, and perhaps more than one, has been pub- lished to enshrine them. Without the assistance of this 12 NEW WORDS SELF-DEFINED glossary it is almost impossible to read some of the numerous novels of poilu life. So far as I am aware the latest creation is the infinitesimal word "as," or rather, it is a case of adaptation. Yesterday " as,des carreaux " (to give the full form) stood simply for ace of diamonds. To-day all France, with that swift assimilation which has ever been one of its many mysteries, knows its new meaning and applies it. . . . But why ace of diamonds? That I cannot explain. — Punch, London, July 11, 1917. Finally, Mr. Dauzat omits to note that the famous word as (first the crack cavalryman, now the virtuoso air- man), which has now passed into English, has lately acquired a derogatory nuance, a touch of the implica- tion of jeune premier, so much that when an artillery- man, in sincere admiration, called a member of a bomb- ing party an ace, he had great difficulty in persuading the bomber that he had not been insulted. — London Times, review of Dauzat's V Argot de la Guerre (1918). ASH-CAN* When our fellows first went over they had to learn a few things from the British. We had first to get rid of some childish ideas about depth charges. We brought over a toy size of 50 to 60 pounds. They showed us a man's size one — 300 pounds of T. N. T., a contraption looking so much like a galvanized iron ash-barrel with flattened sides that they call them "ash-cans." — James B. Con- Nolly, The U-Boat Hunters (1918). •See can. NEW WORDS SELF-DEFINED 13 The depth charge is known in the Navy as the "egg" or the "ash can." It is a tremendous body of exceed- ingly high explosive, suitably incased, that can be set to explode at various depths beneath the surface of the water. It is projected overboard at times and in places where there is reason to believe there is a submarine beneath, and it has a wide destructive area. — Samuel G. Blythe, Saturday Evening Post, Oct. 12, 1918. ATTABOY Copies of newspapers just arrived from Paris contain " human interest " stories of the American troops. Here is a lively incident written by a reporter for Ulntran- sigeant, published on July 4: "Atta boy! atta boy! This cry was heard to-day by Parisians who acclaimed Gen. Pershing and his vigorous stalwarts. It will soon be popular with us — this American cry — and on our front it will soon be the war cry of the American troops. 'Atta boy !' is a simple popular contraction for 'That's the boy!' which means 'Here is the man for the situation!'." — New York Even- ing Sun, July 31, 1917. When the English heard the Yankees cry "Attaboy!" as some player hit out a three-bagger, they immediately started an inquiry into the meaning of the term. One English paper described it thus: "The term expresses the satisfaction of the spectator with some meritorious performance of a player; literally it means 'That's the stuff, my boy!'" All the London papers took it up, with the result that 14 NEW WORDS SELF-DEFINED in London, at least, the Americans are now almost unanimously called "Attaboys." — Baltimore Evening Sun, July 5, 1918. Baseball may not live in Stratford, but "Attaboy" will. As the punting parties pass each other on the Avon to-day, right now, they are saying, "Attaboy." They are saying it at the Red Lion Inn, also at the Golden Horse. Even on the doorstep of the home of the im- mortal Shakespeare they are saying "Attaboy." — Evening Capital, Annapolis, Md., Oct. 31, 1918. AUSSIE, AUSSEY, OZZIE The term "Aussies" was used by Australians early in the present war, just after the first Australian troops went across to France from Egypt. Men would be heard to say, "Huh, Aussie is a batter country than this, my oath," and gradually the term has spread until now it is practically the only term used in that particu- lar sense among all ranks of Australian soldiers, and also by people who are in any way associated with them. There are two ways of spelling the word — one "Aussie" and the other "Aussey." In a book shortly to be pub- lished the author, C. Hampton Thorp, a one-time dig- ger (soldier), maintains that Australia, as a country, is spelled "Aussie" for purposes of abbreviation, but Australian fighting men abroad are termed "Ausseys." — Baltimore Star, Nov., 1918. Our men felt the same way about the Australian private. They liked the Tommy well enough, they were grateful to him, but when we were attached to the Australian NEW WORDS SELF-DEFINED 15 regiments they were glad to be with the men "who called a nail a nail and not a nile." The fondness be- tween the soldiers was mutual. There was nothing an Ozzie liked so much as righting with a Yankee com- pany. — Capt. Edward M. Kent, N. Y. Times, Feb. 23, 1919. AVIATIK "A little more, and undoubtedly you'd have been taken prisoners by the aviatiks." "What's that you say?" "Yes; that's our nickname here [in Paris] for the police, because of their frequent raids. We are often the victims, for your true policeman is without pity. It's an innocent title that hurts no one." — Marcel Nadaud, Atlantic Monthly, November, 1918. AVION It is necessary to explain parenthetically here that French military aviation, generally speaking, is divided into three groups — the avions de chasse or airplanes of pursuit, which are used to hunt down enemy aircraft or to fight them off; avions de bombar dement, big, un- wieldy monsters, for use in bombarding raids; and avions de reglage, cumbersome creatures designed to regulate artillery fire, take photographs, and do scout duty. — James R. McConnell, Flying for France (1916). B BAFFLE PAINTING Washington, Aug. 24. — New developments in the art of marine camouflage have effected radical changes in the painting of ships to protect them from the enemy. Modern naval warfare no longer reckons upon "in- visibility" as a defensive factor, authorities having arrived at the conclusion that paint itself, being de- pendent upon light, will not overcome shadows. "Baffle painting" has been developed as a substitute to deceive a submarine commander as to the size and form of a ship and her course and speed. Lieut.-Com. Norman Wilkinson, Royal Naval Volun- teer Reserve, the inventor of "baffle painting," came to the conclusion after long experiment that the moment a submarine comes to the surface within striking distance no method of painting would render a ship sufficiently invisible to escape being seen. — Baltimore Sun, Aug. 25, 1918. BANK Number Eight's motor commenced again, the craft began to climb, straightened out, swung around in a long, swooping turn, one wing rising, the other lowering, 16 NEW WORDS SELF-DEFINED 17 as the pilot "banked" precisely as a cyclist or a skater leans his body in rounding a sharp turn, then suddenly lurched and shot sideways through the air. — D. H. Haines, American Boy, Feb., 1919. BARBAQUE Barbaque, which has now largely supplanted bidoclw and become the normal word for meat, whereas in the past it was opposed to bidoche as bad meat is to good, remains something of a mystery. It is suggested that it comes from the Roumanian berbec, a sheep, and dates from the Crimean War, when the troops had to subsist chiefly on scraggy Wallachian mutton; on the other hand, we feel that our own word barbecue, which was probably taken by the buccaneers from the Spanish, should yield some solution of the curious word. — Lon- don Times, review of Dauzat's U Argot de la Guerre (1918). BAROGRAPH Many new instruments have been devised for aircraft. These include barographs, which indicate and record altitude. — Problems of Aeroplane Improvement, by Naval Consulting Board of the U. S., August 1, 1918. BARRAGE FIRE " Barrage," an artillery fire that bars the way, has been borrowed from the French and completely Anglicized, being pronounced to rime with " marriage." * — Brand er Matthews, Munseys Magazine, April, 1919. *Ae beard at the, Naval Academy it rimes more frequently with "Garage." 18 NEW WORDS SELF-DEFINED It would astonish you if I could print here a time table I have seen of what is called "barrage fire," that is to say, fire designed to create a zone of death which shall bar the enemy from hindering the advance of the men with the bayonets upon whom in the last analysis the capture of positions always depends. This zone of death was, according to the time table, to be moved forward every few minutes. — Lord Northcliffe's War Book (1916). While I was at the front I had opportunity to observe three distinct types of barrage fire, the "box," the "jumping," and the "creeping." The "box," I have already described to you, as it is used in a raid. The "jumping" plays on a certain line for a certain interval and then jumps to another line. The officers in com- mand of the advance know the intervals of time and space and keep their lines close up to the barrage, mov- ing with it on the very second. The "creeping " barrage opens on a certain line and then creeps ahead at a certain fixed rate of speed, covering every inch of the ground to be taken. The men of the advance simply walk with it, keeping within about thirty yards of the line on which the shells were falling. — Sergeant Alexander Mc- Clintock, Best o' Luck. / BASKET CASE The War Department authorizes the following state- ment from the office of the Surgeon General : The Surgeon General of the Army, Maj. Gen. Mer- NEW WORDS SELF-DEFINED 19 ritte W. Ireland, denies emphatically that there is any foundation for the stories that have been circulated in all parts of the country of the existence of "basket cases" in our hospitals. A basket case is a soldier who has lost both legs and both arms and therefore can not be carried on a stretcher. Gen. Ireland says: "I have personally examined the records and am able to say that there is not a single basket case either on this side of the water or among the soldiers of the A. E. F. Further, I wish to empha- size that there has been no instance of an American soldier so wounded during the whole period of the war." — Official U. S. Bulletin, Washington, March 28, 1919. BATMAN I was rudely brought to earth by the "Quarter" ex- claiming, "'Ere, you, 'op it, tyke it aw'y; blind my eyes, 'e's looking for 'is batman to 'elp 'im carry it." — Arthur Guy Empey, Over the Top (1917). Arrived at my destination, I found a batman and a billet awaiting me. . . . Then my batman, a re- sourceful rascal, secured an outhouse for my special accommodation. — Capt. A. P. Corcoran, Ladies' Home Journal, Nov., 1918. A man staggered past him, blowing like a walrus. It was the Padre's batman, and he had his master tucked under one arm, in his underclothes, kicking feebly. — Punch, London, July 11, 1917. 20 NEW WORDS SELF-DEFINED BIG BERTHA In the course of time I found myself in the Champs Elysees in front of a monstrous cannon. The welcom- ing salutes, a hundred salvos, had just begun. And each time that thundering explosion shook the air the people smiled at each other and cried, "Oho! Big Bertha!" Never again would that vicious old female drop her fatal pills on this pleasant city; and the man they were about to greet had helped to set them free. — Elizabeth Feazer, Saturday Evening Post, March 1, 1919. BILLARD Billard, for instance, has two definite and common applications : in the military hospital it is the operating- table, at the front it is No Man's Land. It would be hard to decide which turn of sense displayed the more macabre humour. — London Times, review of Dauzat's V Argot de la Guerre (1918). BING BOYS After Sir Julian Byng took command the Canadians humorously called themselves "The Bing Boys," after a popular musical comedy. In one battle they gaily signalled back from within a few yards of the artillery barrage that "The Bing Boys are here," denoting their arrival at the second German trench. — Lord North- cliffe's War Booh (1916). NEW WORDS SELF-DEFINED 21 BIRDMAN We used to speak of "a bird's-eye view" of things as descriptive of a broad and impartial sweep of vision from a point high enough above them all to take in their significance as a whole. A better phrase now would be "a birdman's view," because a birdman's eye can see farther and more quickly than the most rapid of nature's scouts. Let us suppose a bird-man to be flying over Europe at present — what would he see? — Baltimore Sun, March 8, 1919. With the American Army in France, September 12 (by mail). — There are birds and birds among American birdmen along the front. One is a rare specimen, the "kewie bird."— Baltimore Star, Oct. 9, 1918. BITTER-ENDER* For a long time the President kept an open mind, and German frightfulness filled it at last to overflowing. He is therefore to-day a bitter-ender, wary and alert against peacemongers, opportunists, and round-table negotiators, however well-meaning and misled in their zeal for humanity. — Saturday Review, London, Sept. 14, 1918. BITTER-ENDERISM I have received from the office of a weekly journal of some prominence a good deal of combined subscription- •See jutqwboiUisl. 22 NEW WORDS SELF-DEFINED soliciting and propaganda-carrying literature, opposing what the editors of the journal in question are pleased to treat as an unreasoning "bitter-enderism" on the part of all who are unwilling to listen to talk of a peace by negotiation with the Central Powers. — W. H. John- son, New York Times, Sept. 15, 1918. BLACK MARIA See crump. BLIGHTY Before the war the English Army was stationed chiefly in India, and their slang consisted largely of words and phrases adapted from the native language. Thus, "blighty" was coined in India and is derived from the Hindustani "Bhilati" meaning home, or England. A "blighty" wound is one which sends a Tommy home to recover. — Atlantic Monthly, Feb., 1917. And his [Tommy's] customary name for Great Britain is "blighty," seemingly a most infelicitous vocable. Its origin, however, is readily traced by the experts; it is an acquisition from the British soldier who has served in India, where the natives call England "Belait," as readers of Kipling's "Kim" will remember. — Brander Matthews, Munsey's Magazine, April, 1919. Our right section commander got a blighty two days ago and is probably now in England. He went off on a firing battery wagon, grinning all over his face, saying he wouldn't sell that bit of blood and shrapnel for a NEW WORDS SELF-DEFINED 23 thousand pounds. — Coningsby Dawson, Carry On (1917). BLIMP The captive observation balloon rejoices in the above appellation for reasons known only to the lads who use them over there. — Baltimore Sun, Sept. 29, 1918. St. Johns, N. F., May 15.— The United States Navy dirigible airship C-5, which arrived here this forenoon, broke her moorings at Quidi Vidi this afternoon and disappeared from view in an easterly direction, pro- pelled by a strong wind. . . . The "blimp" had been anchored at her grounds, but strong winds made it exceedingly difficult to manage her.— New York Times, May 16, 1919. Seaplanes, dirigibles (blimps), and kite balloons make good scouts because of the large areas they can cover. — Commander C. C. Gill, Naval Power in the War (1914-1918). Two can play at the bombing game, and in the Dover Strait the English "blimps" take a hand at it, those small dirigibles which gleam high overhead like silvered sausages. — Ralph D. Paine, The Fighting Fleets (1918) . BLINGER The shell arrived in Fritzie's "midst" just as his Ger- man finger reached out to fire a shell of gas and give our boys a "blinger." — H. B. Mil ward, Over the Top. 24 NEW WORDS SELF-DEFINED BLINKER There are classes in signalling, semaphore, and dotter, and at night with the "blinker" that sets the electric lamps to winking and flashing the letters of the Morse code. — Ralph D. Paine, The Fighting Fleets (1918). BLUE, BLUET A French soldier is also spoken of as a "blue" (bleu) appropriate in view of the colour of the new army uni- form. The young soldier, who has been called up since the war began, is a "bluet" (bleuet) and the familiar blue corn flower has become his emblem. — Arthur H. Warner, New York Times, Oct. 7, 1917. BLUE TRIANGLE* At the base hospitals I visited the huts for American nurses, where the Blue Triangle means all the refine- ments and seclusions and respites which the splendid bands of nurses had been accustomed to at home. Hostess-houses for our enlisted men are being opened as rapidly as possible, in which the soldiers find an en- vironment possessing all those feminine touches which they miss more than anything else while on foreign soil.* — Joseph H. Odell, Atlantic Monthly, Nov., 1918. BOCHE All the letters from our soldiers are overflowing with cheerfulness. Where, for instance, does that nick- •See Red Triangle. NEW WORDS SELF-DEFINED 25 name come from applied by them to the enemy — the "Boches?" It comes from where so many more have come; its author is nobody and everybody; it is the spontaneous product of that Gallic humour which jokes at danger, takes liberties with it. — Rene Doumic, before French Academy, Oct. 26, 1914. The word "Boche" appears to have been born in or about the year 1860 in the world of the light-o'-loves, and meant simply "mauvais sujet" as opposed to "muche," "muche" being defined by Rigaud as " Jeune homme timide," and by Del van (1866) in substantially the same sense. — D. N. Samson, Saturday Review, London, Sept. 30, 1916. The source of that word "boche," an abbreviation of "alboche" or "alleboche," has been a subject of dis- cussion in France since the war brought the term into prominence. The most plausible explanation seems to be that, in French slang, it is not an infrequent device to substitute "boche" or "oche" for the final syllable of a word, with a view to treating it in a trivial or dis- dainful way, and that "alleboche" has been thus made from "allemand," the recognized word for German. — Arthur H. Warner, New York Times, Oct. 7, 1917. It was applied to the Germans in the Franco-Prussian war. You will find it many times so used in Zola's realistic "La Debacle." Previous to 1870, it was merely a French slang word applied derogatively to any man. "Ce boche" was the equivalent of our "that chump," "that blighter."— I. M., New York Times, April 7, 1916. 26 NEW WORDS SELF-DEFINED A few weeks ago we printed an article from the pen of Mr. Marion Reedy, in which Kipling was taken to task. Among other offenses in Mr. Reedy's view was Kipling's continual use of the word Boche for German. Mr. Reedy felt the word was too obscure in meaning to be warranted for use by so eminent a writer. So some light is shed for both of them by Mr. Warren B. Blake, who quotes the Parisian playwright, Mr. Maurice Donnay, to the effect that " the word boche is not a war- creation." It was already in the popular vocabulary, though not in the dictionary of the French Academy. Mr. Donnay describes it as a "telescope word," likeawfo- bus, formed from automobile and omnibus. Taking the French word for German, Allemand, and adding caboche (thieves' cant for "head") we get Alboche, which was speedily shortened to boche. In Reedy's Mirror (St. Louis), Mr. Blake writes: "Mr. Donnay is well pleased with this trouvaille; he finds it equally pleasing to ear and eye and a fine piece of onomatopoeia. 'It is the noise,' he explains, 'made by a fat man jumping with both big feet together into blood and mud.' From boche indeed, Mr. Donnay derives other substantives: bochie, bochisme, bocherie, bochonneries. All this in an article contributed to the Paris Figaro of April 10, 1915." — Literary Digest, Nov. 6, 1915. And there are fellows blinded for life by that terrible mustard-gas. But the worst of all, mother, is the train- loads of refugees, containing thousands of helpless women and children, herded like animals and driven NEW WORDS SELF-DEFINED 27 from their home by the Boche (pronounced "bush"). You should hear that word uttered by the French. It's a curse. — Private John C. Birk, to his mother at Conemaugh, Pa., Literary Digest, Nov. 23, 1918. The reprobation of the outside world is seen to have had considerable effect upon the Kaiser's complacence. He cries out against "the detestable word Boche," and notes that its use is getting "ever rarer" in France. This because "the German sword," with "the help of our good old God up there," is regaining us the respect of all the world.— Literary Digest, May 18, 1918. BOCHIA There did not remain a single one of its [St. Quentin's] inhabitants to liberate. Of the original population of 56,000 not an old man, woman, or child has been left. Hale or sick, young and old, they have been carried away into what our allies call Bochia. — G. H. Perris, New York Times, Oct. 4, 1918. BOIS DE LA BRIGADE DE MARINE Army Headquarters, June 30, 1918. In view of the brilliant conduct of the Fourth Brigade of the Second United States Division, which in a spirited fight took Bouresches and the important strong point of Bois de Belleau, stubbornly defended by a large enemy force, the general commanding the Sixth Army orders that henceforth, in all official papers, the Bois de Belleau should be named "Bois de la Brigade de Marine." — Division General Degoutte, Command- 28 NEW WORDS SELF-DEFINED ing Sixth Army. Annual Report of Secretary of the Navy (1918). BOLOISM "Boloism" as a term of reproach promises to break into the English language along with many other words never thought of before the war. Therefore the activi- ties of the Kaiser's agent* will probably be immortalized in future dictionaries, as were the acts of Judas and Simon Magus. Scattered through the English language are many words derived from proper names, some re- sulting from derogatory acts and some from just the opposite. — New York Sun, Feb. 17, 1918. tJ BOLSHEVIKI The correct explanation seems to be as follows : At its convention of 1903, the Russian Social-Democratic Labour Party disagreed upon the matter of program. Under the leadership of Lenine, the extreme radicals finally triumphed, being known thereafter as the Bolshe- viki, or "members of the majority." Their defeated opponents became known as the Mensheviki, or " mem- bers of the minority." Synonyms for Bolsheviki and Mensheviki are Maximalists and Minimalists. They are also known as the Extreme and Moderate sections of the Social-Democratic Party. Lincoln Steffens says that the Bolsheviki are the "radicals of the radicals," while many of the Bolsheviki themselves link the name *BoIo Pacha, a Frenchman, was convicted of treason by a court-martial at Paris on Feb. 14, 1918, and sentenced to death. NEW WORDS SELF-DEFINED 29 with anarchism. Above all, it should be remembered that while all Socialists are now claimed to have Bol- shevist leanings, the Bolsheviki proper are only one branch of one Socialist Party in Russia. Though the Bolsheviki first saw the light in 1903, they came into international prominence only when in 1917 they were successful in overthrowing the Kerensky Government. — A. C. Ratshesky, New York Times, Nov. 24, 1918. Dealing with Russia, the speaker [ex-President Taft] said that the Bolsheviki were an enemy to society, and that their doctrine, shown by actual practice, was that the world belongs to the lowest proletariat, and that everybody with thrift, good clothes, and a clean shave who engaged in an effort to better himself should be killed— New York Times, Dec. 10, 1918. The Bolsheviki are the extremists of socialism, the whole-hoggers, the come-outers, the bitter-enders, the no-compromisers, the intransigents. Those old Russian revolutionists, whom we used to call "Nihi- lists" and "Anarchists," and whom we used to shudder at even while we sympathized, are looked upon by the Bolsheviki as hopelessly old fashioned and reactionary, no better than we bourgeois republicans or wealthy aristocrats. The present government of Russia is not a democracy and does not profess to be. It is what it calls itself, a dictatorship of the proletariat, the rule of the working class, an inverted autocracy. — Hamilton Holt, Independent, Dec. 14, 1918. SO NEW WORDS SELF-DEFINED BOLSHEVIKISM "It cannot be," said Senator Thomas, of Colorado, "that we have overthrown autocracy only to prepare the world for Bolshevikism. If that be so, we have made it worse than ever." — New York Times, Jan. 4, 1919. BOLSHEVISM, BOLSHEVIST Only the other day a Vermont newspaper was expressing bewilderment over the ominous word that came out of Russia, "Bolshevism." "By the way," it remarked, "what's the etymology of 'Bolshevism?' A Bolshevik might practice Bolshevikism; so might the Bolsheviki, but how do we get rid of the 'k' in undertaking to angli- cize the word?"— New York Times, Feb. 3, 1919. A Bolshevik, if we want to anglicize the word, is a Bol- shevist, and it is a matter of simple reasoning that the ism practiced by a Bolshevist is "Bolshevism," just as an anarchist is a believer in the doctrines of anarchism. If there is the slightest excuse for saying that a Bolshevik practices "Bolshevikism," then etymological analogy would compel us to refer to the doctrine of anar- chists as "anarchistism." — Providence Journal, Jan., 1919. Bolshevism — the universal menace to-day — is a Ger- man product, German framed and German financed, the prize package of discord that Teutonic cunning has handed the world. I was in Petrograd when Lenine NEW WORDS SELF-DEFINED 31 arrived. Figuratively, I watched him open his Pan- dora box of dissension and let loose a poison gas. I have smelled its fumes in half a dozen different countries since that time. Nowhere have they been more deadly than in this very United States of ours, where the reptile of Bolshevism rears its head as the I. W. W. It has standardized anarchy, put a premium on destruction, imposed a penalty on prosperity. It is the new Prus- sianism. — Isaac F. Marcosson, New York Times, April 15, 1919. BOY HOWDY "Boy howdy," said the officer who was waiting on deck for me, the same man I had seen, on various oc- casions, tearing through the Army lines at the annual Navy-Army football games in Philadelphia, and as big and husky as he was when he used to spread the Army tackles all round the sward when they sought to impede his progress. "Boy howdy," said another, the keen, clear-eyed gun- nery expert, whose skill and knowledge I had learned to respect and admire in Washington. "Boy howdy," as they came, one after another, men bearing famous American naval names, and worthy of them, men who were making new famous American names for themselves and their sons — why, it was like Old Home Week at the Army and Navy Club in Wash- ington, and I took another look at the flag standing out in the breeze above me and just naturally gave three 32 NEW WORDS SELF-DEFINED cheers for the Red, White, and Blue. We were a long way from Pennsylvania Avenue, but everybody was on the job. — Samuel G. Blythe, Saturday Evening Post, Nov. 2, 1918. BUDDY* Hess dropt me and, thinking it impossible for him to get me to the lines alone, he piled up a half dozen bodies of my poor dead " buddies " and barricaded my position. There I remained for several hours longer, and finally during a lull in the battle I was gotten back to the lines. The boys piled up around me were my own camp-mates whom I knew and recognized. — Joyce Lewis, Literary Digest, Jan. 25, 1919. One can fancy him [William Snell], however, as standing on the deck of the submarine, teeth chattering, eye- balls rolling, while he mutters to a ship-mate : "W-hat yo' reckon d-dese yere Germans aimin' to do, b-buddy?" — Ralph D. Paine, The Fighting Fleets (1918). BULLETIZE We ran on until they [the Boches] opened up with their machine guns, toward which they had been running. We dropt, of course. There was not much space they didn't " bulletize." They mowed that field thoroughly. — Corporal Noel E. Paton, to his mother at Fayette- ville, N. C, Literary Digest, Nov. 23, 1918. *See get it and guy. NEW WORDS SELF-DEFINED 33 BURBANK* "To burbank" is by this time practically a legitimate active verb in the "United States language," in the same category with " fletcherize" and "kodak." — Literary Digest, April 10, 1915. BUSf The stunt will be to make sure of the delivery of the busses, and get to the front before evening. . . . Golly, but I slept! and I had a peacherino of a dream. I was sprouting wings. I soared! — I soared! — scat- tering all the little busses behind me as I flew. — Marcel Nadaud, Atlantic Monthly, November, 1918. It is not difficult with these machines because they take their time and one can go through the formula, "Pull — kick — cut and give 'em the gun again," quite deliber- ately. The old bus pokes her nose up into the air to a stall, the kick on the rudder turns her over on her side, and she slips quite naturally into a straight dive, which is the only terrifying moment. — From an American in France, Independent, Nov. 16, 1918. BUZZER See Iddy-Umpty. BUZZ WIRE We proceeded along a narrow, slippery path by the side of which ran a buzz wire, which we were in constant •From Luther Burbank (1849 — ), originator of new fruits, flowers, etc. tSee joy-stick. 34 NEW WORDS SELF-DEFINED danger of tripping over. A buzz wire is a telephone wire with an accompanying sound so jangled and dis- cordant that no German tapper can listen in successfully to any conversation. — Maude Radford Warren, Sat- urday Evening Post, Oct. 12, 1918. BY-PRODUCTS ENGINEER A new composition that is just like india-rubber, "only more so," is editorially announced by The Scientific American (New York, September 7) . The editor pref- aces his account by the statement that this invention is typical of many that are appearing just now, in that it is the discovery of a new profession — the "by-products engineer." The specialty of this type of engineer is the utilization of hitherto worthless by-products. — Literary Digest, Oct. 19, 1918. CAFARD The war seems to have made of the average soldier a philosopher and a fatalist, who jests at danger and radiates cheerfulness, but there are occasions when he does not live up to this part. One of them is when, on leave from the trenches, he reaches the last day of his holiday and must return to the front. Then he loses his smile and his banter and in soldier slang has the "cafard." Literally, the word means cockroach. — Arthur H. Warner, New York Times, Oct. 7, 1917. CAHENSLYISM One of the most interesting chapters in the book [Ten Years Near the German Frontier by Maurice Francis Egan] is "The Religious Propaganda." The Kaiser looked on the late Archbishop Ireland of Minneapolis as an enemy of Germany because that eminent prelate had opposed the movement known as "Cahenslyism." It was the aim of Peter Paul Cahensly to put the Eng- lish language in the background in teaching religion to German subjects in America. — New York Times Booh Review, March 2, 1919. 35 36 NEW WORDS SELF-DEFINED The success of Archbishop Ireland, who led the fight against "Cahenslyism," as the movement to Germanize the parochial schools was called, throws a side-light on the present. — Literary Digest, Oct. 19, 1918. CAMION Besides carrying the gas on the flat cars, motor trucks or "camions" as they are now called throughout the Allied army, there are also generation stations situated behind the lines. — Electrical Experimenter, Nov., 1918. Thence through the dusk you dimly see ambulances flit past; or camions rumbling heavily, like your own, some empty, others bearing wounded on stretchers arranged crosswise. — Stories of Americans in the World War (1918), p. 36. CAMOUFLAGE* There's a new word in the English language — and by that I mean the corrupt dialect of our mother tongue used in the British Isles, not the pure and yet improved variety current in North America. As soon as this war is over and Tommy resumes his civilian activities, the British will be getting out new editions of those diction- aries wherein, they vainly believe, is embalmed the standard English language of the world. And in the C section, probably without the comment of "argot" or "slang" or "colloquial," or any other mark of dis- •See dazzle painting. NEW WORDS SELF-DEFINED 37 reputability, will appear camouflage. Doubtless it will make its way, though more slowly, into those purer re- positories of the tongue published in Boston or New York; for we are sending an army over to France just now, and the first new word they will learn at the Front will be camouflage. The term was pretty nearly un- known, even to the French, three years ago; and the thing it represents was absolutely unknown. It is pronounced, at present, French fashion, like this — "cam-oo-flazh," the first a being short, as in cat; the second a broader, as in harm. It had laboured along for centuries, a rare and ob- scure French word, having several meanings, mostly slang. But in the theatrical business it signified make- up. The scene painters of the Parisian theaters carried it with them to the war and fixed it in army slang; for just about that time the armies of Europe began to introduce a new branch of tactics into warfare. By the first winter of the war both sides were at it. The British, as they worked up to efficiency, adopted the method and learned the word. This word — having none other for the process — they added to the vocabulary of the British Army; it was new, and it was susceptible to a great variety of meta- phorical uses. At latest accounts the British soldiers were working it to death. They use it as a noun, verb and adjective. They use it for any variety of conceal- ment — moral, spiritual, or intellectual. — Will Irwin, Saturday Evening Post, Sept. 29, 1917. 409678 38 NEW WORDS SELF-DEFINED La guerre a cree l'art du camouflage, un art qui ne com- porte aucun souci du beau, l'artiste n'ayant en vue qu'un seul but: le trompe-l'oeil. Les premiers essais de cet art nouveau ont eu pour but, on le sait, d'empecher l'artillerie de reperer les canons, les convois, les tanks, etc., bref, tous les impedi- menta qui constituent le train d'une armee. — Quoted in Nouvelles de France, Sept. 5, 1918, from Le Figaro. Abbott H. Thayer, the well-known academician, was the first individual ever to take up the art of conceal- ment, when he began the study of the protective colour- ing of animals twenty-five years ago. He noted that such beasts as the zebra and okapi were merged in the landscape at a few yards distance; and he evolved the principle that the breaking of outline was the destruc- tion of visibility. Little was thought of camouflage at the onset of the present big conflict. There were the officers' white-kid gloves — fatal targets for German snipers — and waving plumes; the burnished cuirass and the pennoned lance. Then the two contending lines dug themselves in and locked horns. Concealment became all important — concealment from the aero with the eagle eye; from the artillery observation-station, binocular-eyed; from the practiced glance of the sharpshooter and the keen vision of the patrols. Artists in the ranks busied themselves, a new branch of the art military was born — camouflage. To-day it is highly developed. There are two branches, invisibility and imitation. A supply-train NEW WORDS SELF-DEFINED 39 may look like a row of cottages; that is imitation. A screen tops a great gun so that the green of the screen blends with the grass of the meadow; that is invisibility. There is a third offshoot — the art of making compell- ing replicas of camps, guns, piles of supplies, trenches, ammunition depots, and the like, which are not bona fide at all, but the aero man thinks they are, and wastes his bombs and energy attacking nothing worth while. Such is the great game of hocus-pocus. — New York World, Sept., 1917. While camouflage is new, as a word applied to the de- ceptive devices adopted to fool the enemy, it dates back as a practise to Bible days when Gideon, with ^hree hundred men, put to flight a force of 135,000 Mid- ianites by providing each of his small force with a pitcher containing a light. According to the prevailing cus- toms of war in those days, only the commander of a corps carried a light, so that when Gideon's men broke their pitchers and displayed their lights it is easy to believe that the effect of the camouflage was quite startling. At all events it worked, for the Midianites, thinking each light represented a company, fled in dismay. The artificial forest idea as developed in the present war is of ancient origin, for, says the Kansas City Star: In Shakespeare's "Macbeth" each man in the army of Malcolm carried a branch of a tree from Birnam Wood when he approached Macbeth' s hosts. It had been predicted that King Macbeth would not be in dan- ger until Birnam Wood moved toward his castle. When 40 NEW WORDS SELF-DEFINED Macbeth saw what he thought was the forest approach- ing, he became frightened and lost the day. "Camouflaging trenches and breastworks in the Civil War was done with branches of trees and sod," Capt. E. R. Monfort, Cincinnati, former commander-in-chief of the G. A. R., says. — Literary Digest, Feb. 16, 1918. The work is founded on the theory of the Indian who painted himself so he would be lost in the desert when hiding from animals or pursuers. The trick is being used to conceal outposts and observers who are sta- tioned at dangerous points. Many false posts have been constructed for observers. I have been informed in complete detail of how an outpost that proved of great service was substituted overnight for a dead horse in No Man's Land. The dead horse lay between the lines on a bit of rising ground. During the night the dead horse was removed and the sculptors made a fake horse, which was put out with a man inside. His busi- ness was to remain there during the day and come back to the lines at night to report. As his post was above the German trenches, he was able to keep close watch on the enemy's movements at that point. — Ernest Peixotto, New York Evening Sun, May, 1917. CAMOUFLEUR Recent orders of the Government to the engineering department of the United States Army to stop enlisting men as camoufleurs in a special camouflage division ends a chapter in military camouflage in America. A little more than a year ago it was doubtful whether or not NEW WORDS SELF-DEFINED H the army would have any great use for camoufleurs in the forces abroad. By the recent decree military camouflage is made an essential in every regiment, like engineering, trench digging, map making, road building, and sharpshooting. There are now, according to military camoufleurs in New York City, about 500 expert camoufleurs abroad with the Pershing forces. The new order makes it necessary for each regiment in every training camp on this side to have at least sixteen camoufleurs to train other men in the new art of camouflage. American women camoufleurs are being trained ac- cording to the same method as the men, under the Women's League for National Service and under Lieu- tenant Towle. Discussing their work he said: "There isn't any reason why the women shouldn't do as well as the men as camoufleurs — that is, in mak- ing the materials behind the lines. It isn't heavy work, but it demands ingenious workers, skilled in details." — New York Times Magazine, May 26, 1918. CAN* These depth bombs really deserve a eulogy of their own. They have done more toward winning the war than all the giant howitzers whose caliber has stupefied a world. In appearance and mechanism they are the simplest of affairs. The Navy always refers to them as cans — "I dropped a can right on his head"; "It was the last *See ash-can. 42 NEW WORDS SELF-DEFINED can that did the business." — Henry B. Beston, Ladies* Home Journal, Nov., 1918. CANTEEN A canteen is a general store in which tobacco, cigarettes, chocolate, soft drinks, and sundries necessary to the soldiers' comfort are sold at cost. Canteens are ex-> tremely difficult to run for three reasons: the Y. M. C. A.'s lack of experience in store-keeping; the scarcity of provisions owing to restricted shipping and rail transportation; and, at the front, the constant move- ment of army units. Nevertheless, despite all ob- stacles, they are operated with an amazing degree of success, and the presence of American women as can- teen workers serves to make them attractive and home- like. — Joseph H. Odell, Atlantic Monthly, Novem- ber, 1918. CARRY ON There is no explanation save the great army phrase "Carry on." We "carry on" because, if we don't we shall let other men down and put their lives in danger. And there's more than that — we all want to live up to the standard that prompted us to come. — Coningsby Dawson, Carry On (1917). CASABA The word "casaba" undoubtedly has been taken from a place-name quite popular in Asia Minor. It is usually NEW WORDS SELF-DEFINED 43 transliterated as Kassabah in atlases of the region. There are five towns in Asia Minor bearing this name. The one which has given its name to melons, however, is located some 12 or 15 miles from Smyrna in a valley which has been long noted as a very favoured agricul- tural region. Two types of melons have been brought to this country from this place and have each been called casaba. — D. N. Shoemaker, letter, Dec. 19, 1918. CHANDELLE Snatches of talk (unintelligible outside the "fancy") reach one; we, of course, know only the French, but the R. F. C. [Royal Flying Corps] stuff is equally cryptic. "Spotted him at four thousand eight, 'piqued' on him, got under his tail, did a chandelle, got in a good rafale, did a glissade, went into a vrille, and lost so much height I could not catch him again." An R. F. C. man would say, "Spotted him at forty- eight hundred, dove on him, got under his tail, did a zoom, got in a good burst, did a side-slip, went into a spin," etc. I may say that "chandelle" or "zoom" means a sudden, very steep leap upward (limited in length and steepness by the power and speed of the machine). Some of our latest machines will do the most extraordinary feats in this line — things that an old experienced pilot in America would have to see to believe. A "glissade" is a wing-slip to the side, and down; a "vrille" is a spinning nose-dive. — Charles Bernard Nordhoff, Atlantic Monthly, Aug., 1918. 44 NEW WORDS SELF-DEFINED An approved method of attack was to dive out of the sun at the rearmost Boche of a Hun formation, shoot him down if you had the luck, chandelle or spiral up- ward, and dive again at the next tail-ender. I tried the trick once and got as far as the first act in the pro- gram, but I had shut off my pressure and forgot about it, and when, after crashing my first Hun, I tried to regain my altitude, the Spad refused to climb. — Cap- tain Edward Victor Rickenbacker, United States Air Service, March, 1919. y CHEER-0 The British have a funny word — Cheer-O! At first it seemed a bit absurd — Cheer-O! They said it when we joined the fleet, They say it now when e'er we meet, Till smilingly we all repeat, Cheer-O! They say it when they take a drink — Cheer-O! They say it in their sleep, I think — Cheer-O! They'll say it when they meet the Hun, They'll fire it with the opening gun, They'll sing it when the battle's won — Cheer-O! Comrades of the Mist and Other Rhymes of the Grand Fleet (1919). NEW WORDS SELF-DEFINED 45 CHEF DE BATAILLON Psychologist, pathologist, carpenter, builder, engineer, cook, physician, scout, judge, father — get all these professions together, none of which are learned at St. Cyr, and you have a good Chef de bataillon. — General Malleterre, Harper s Magazine, Oct., 1917. CHEMICAL SENSE According to Prof. John B. Watson, chief of the depart- ment of experimental psychology and animal behaviour, of Johns Hopkins University, the tendency to use the name "chemical sense" has grown rapidly of late. There are those senses, sensations, and organs of sense which man lacks. Insects, fish, bats, and other creatures have a great advantage over mankind in the number and variety of senses possessed. The " chemical sense " is the power present in fish tissues to recognize, distinguish, and separate poisons and other chemicals from one another. Man has this sense to a very slight extent in his taste, smell, and mucous mem- brane sensations. Animals, however, can do much more than perceive, smell, taste, noxious substances, cuts, burns, and bruises. — Washington Times, April 27, 1915. CHEVAL DE BOIS See lashay. 4G NEW WORDS SELF-DEFINED CHINAFICATION "Chinafication" was Theodore Roosevelt's word for the state of helplessness to which pacifism would reduce America. — Literary Digest, May 31, 1919. CLEBER Another word to which Mr. Dauzat can supply no key is cleber, which means to eat. It has a shade of mean- ing which distinguishes it from the more ordinary bec- queter. Becqueter means to eat in the ordinary routine; cleber means to eat after one has been almost or quite starving. Possibly, in the usual evolution of such words, the distinction has by now disappeared. It certainly existed a year ago, when it was made clear to the present writer, and it gives force to the explana- tion then proposed, that this word also belongs to the soldier slang of the First Empire. Kleba is the Russian for bread, and the starving soldiers in the retreat are said to have called out 'Papa, kleba /' to Napoleon." — London Times, review of Dauzat 's L' Argot de la Guerre (1918). CLICK Our Machine Gun Company lost seventeen killed and thirty-one wounded in that little local affair of "straightening the line," while the other companies clicked it worse than we did. — Arthur Guy Empey, Over the Top (1917). NEW WORDS SELF-DEFINED 47 "Move a bit faster, mate," he cries, "unless you want to click." — Captain A. P. Corcoran, Ladies' Home Journal, Oct., 1918. COAL-BOX See crump. COLLEGE DES ETATS-UNIS A further instance is the "College des Etats-Unis," which a Franco-American committee, made up of in- tellectual leaders of the two countries, is establishing in Paris, and which is proposing as the first point of its active programme the concerted study of progress made in war surgery, in war medicine, in war radiology. — Gustave Rodriguez, Scribner's Monthly, Nov., 1918, p. 555. COMMUNITY SECRETARY Washington, November 3. — The very newest thing in war organizations made its debut at Bridgeport, Conn., a short time ago when Harrison G. Streeter, of that city, was elected "community secretary" in the pay of the United States government. To the so-called average citizen who knows that there are already more war organizations than he can re- member the names of, and that all of them want money, it may seem that another is unnecessary. But this newest one is a peace, as well as a war, organization. And it does not want money; it wants only cooperation. 48 NEW WORDS SELF-DEFINED Its ultimate purpose is to place a paid representative of the federal government in every community in the United States for the purpose of helping people to understand and use their national government at Wash- ington. Every American citizen of organizing ability — and the war has brought them forth in every part of the country — should know of this plan and consider its applicability to his own home town. — Baltimore Star, Nov. 6, 1918. CONTACT Essence et gazl [Oil and gas !] you call to your mechani- cian, adjusting your gasolene and air throttles while he grips the propeller. Contact ! he shrieks, and Contact ! you reply. You snap on the switch, he spins the propeller, and the motor takes. Drawing forward out of line, you put on full power, race across the grass, and take the air. — James R. McConnell, Flying for France (1916). COOTIE From that time on my friends the "cooties" were con- stantly with me. "Cooties," or body lice, are the bane of Tommy's existence. — Arthur Gut Empey, Over the Top (1917). COPAIN Scarcely any one who has read anything of the war, however, has failed to learn at least a few of the most- used words. He knows, of course, that poilu (hairy) NEW WORDS SELF-DEFINED 49 means a soldier at the front, that marmite (pot) means shell, and pruneau (prune) means bullet. Bosche, a German, and copain (a good old-French word lately revived) a comrade. — Gelett Burgess, Century, Sept., 1916. COTERIST There's no use looking in the dictionary for the word "coterist"; it's brand new; I have just made it myself. It means one who fancies the sort of pleasures that are peculiar to coteries. A coterie is a set, or clique. . . . I don't want any kind of enjoyment that is exclusive. It's sure to be unwholesome. I hate the word "ex- clusive" anyhow. — Frank Crane, New York Globe, Oct. 24, 1918. COUCHY, CUSHY Since uncertain French is mixed with English, a "couchy" wound — no doubt from the French "coucher" — stands for an injury necessitating a short layoff in hospital. — Atlantic Monthly, Feb., 1917. I was highly elated because I was, as I thought, in for a cushy job back at the base. — Arthur Guy Empey, Over the Top (1917). CRASH DIVE Now, a submarine crew is a well-trained machine. There are no shouted orders. If a submarine captain wants to send his boat under quickly, he simply touches the button of a Klaxon; the horn gives a demoniac yell 50 NEW WORDS SELF-DEFINED throughout the ship, and each man does what he ought to do at once. Such a performance is called a "crash dive." — Henry B. Beston, Atlantic Monthly, Nov., 1918. CREEPING BARRAGE The next step was the development of the "creeping barrage," which was, I believe, British in origin. The enemy's trenches, though roughly parallel to your own, are never exactly parallel. Sometimes there is a con- siderable difference in alignment. Your trenches, for instance, in the particular sector for which the attack is planned, might be roughly a straight line, while the enemy's might be a sinuous one. Photographs taken from the air (the Allies had begun photography in the first autumn of the war and brought it to a high degree of perfection) had exactly plotted for you upon a large scale map the enemy's front trench; your barrage fire began in front of your own trenches along a line corresponding to the shape of your own trenches, but as it approached the enemy's trench it would take more and more the shape of his line. — Belloc's Weekly War Review, 7 Baltimore Sun, Feb. 24, 1918. CRUCIFIXION, CRUCIFY Then comes the famous Field Punishment No. 1. Tommy has nicknamed it "crucifixion." It means that a man is spread eagled on a limber wheel two hours a day for twenty-one days. During this time NEW WORDS SELF-DEFINED 51 he only gets water, bully beef, and biscuits for his chow. You get "en icified "for repeated minor offences . — Arthur Guy Empey, Over the Top (1917). CRUMP Captain Louis Keene in Crumps (1917) says that the shell called a "Jack Johnson,' then a "Black Maria," is now a "Crump" because it makes a sort of cru-ump sound when it explodes. The British troops in the trenches accumulated half a dozen slang terms to name the variety of detonating missiles they were in the habit of receiving from the enemy. The larger shells filled with high explosives were called "black Marias," "Jack Johnsons," and "coal-boxes," until some more luckily inspired islander was moved to call them "crumps," the new word being an attempt to suggest the ripping report of the explosion with which they end their aerial career. — Brander Matthews, Mvnsey's Magazine, April, 1919. CUBISM As pseudo-realistic tendencies, Cubism and Futurism must for a moment detain us. Cubism, the word is a misnomer, appeals to our whole body of visual knowl- edge. We know much more than the figure in a single aspect. Why, then, paint or sculpture it in a single aspect? We know it all around, an infinite number of its contours are present to our mind's eye. Then put down as many of these contours as are significant, and we shall have the pictorial equivalent of the real mental 52 NEW WORDS SELF-DEFINED image. Or, take the argument a stage further. We not merely know, say, the cobweb of contours and sections which denotes a Man on a Balcony, but we might also well know what he was seeing at the time and what he was thinking about. As part of our knowledge this, too, ought to find its place in the picture, and it does. As our knowledge grew, we might have to sug- gest the man's ancestry and personal history. Every- thing, in short, that belongs significantly in our mind as regards the subject-matter by that token belongs in the picture also. The notion is by no means uningeni- ous, and has a perverse logic of its own. It has been formulated by persons of distinct intellectual ability. It is easier to feel its absurdity than to show it. — Frank Jewett Mather, Jr., Nation, Feb. 3, 1916. CUBIST It is vitally necessary to move forward and to shake off the dead hand, often the fossilized dead hand, of the reactionaries; and yet we have to face the fact that there is apt to be a lunatic fringe among the votaries of any forward movement. In this recent art exhibition the lunatic fringe was fully in evidence, especially in the rooms devoted to the Cubists and the Futurists, or Near-Impressionists. — Theodore Roosevelt, His- tory as Literature (1913), p. 305. CUCKOO AEROPLANE See torpedoplane. CUSHY See couchy. D DAZZLE PAINTING* There has been developed, however, particularly during the last year, a system of so-called "dazzle" painting — the vessel being painted in an apparently grotesque and bizarre manner for the purpose, not of rendering it invisible, but rendering it difficult for the submarine commander, peering through his periscope for a few seconds at a time, to determine the course of the vessel. — Annual Report of Secretary of the Navy (1918). DEFEATISM The French Army was still heroic and undaunted, but defeatism had crippled it and undermined the morale behind the lines. It was when this situation was at its worst that the old "Tiger" [Clemenceau] took charge. He handled trea- son and defeatism by means of prison and a firing squad. — Baltimore Evening Sun, Nov. 13, 1918. DEGOMMER The crop of new words from the present war has nat- urally not been fully garnered. The Times (London) •See camouflage. 53 54 NEW WORDS SELF-DEFINED mentions boche, degommer, and liaison. "Degommer," it says, "which properly means to 'take the gum out of,' as applied to silks and other stuffs, has come in popular language to signify 'dismiss from a post,' and in this sense it has been largely adopted in the British trenches." — Literary Digest, May 8, 1915. DEHYDRATION "Dehydration" is a new word for an old idea. The drying of fruits in the sun is an old domestic industry in this country, while in California, with its long rainless season, it assumed commercial proportions decades ago. . . . The term "dehydration," which now figures so often in the public prints, has reference to more or less elaborate processes of indoor drying as distinguished from the old-fashioned practice of drying in the sun. — American Review of Reviews, Dec, 1918. d£m£tallisation Quo! qu'il en soit la premiere tache qui va s'imposer, a quelque &chelle qu'on opere, sera — excusez un neolo- gisme dont j'ai le droit de revendiquer le parrainage — la demStallisation du sol, litteralement farci d'eclats de projectiles. — M. Emile Gautier, Nouvelles de France, Paris, Nov. 7, 1918. DEPTH BOMB The depth bombs, variously known as depth charges or water bombsj are designed to be dropped over the NEW WORDS SELF-DEFINED stern of a ship or thrown in pairs simultaneously to a distance on either side of the vessel by means of a specially designed depth bomb thrower known as a "Y" gun. — Commander C. C. Gill, Naval Power in the War (1914-1918). DETRUCKED "They've detrucked" was the first of the messages to come in. That is one of war's new words. The men who were to fight had been brought up to a point near the jumping-off place in camions. — Herbert Corey, Everybody's Magazine, Nov., 1918. DEVIL DOGS The marines had sworn they would not yield an inch of ground, and they swung into battle with their hel- mets decked with poppies. "Wild cats" and "human cyclones" other enemies had called them in the past, but the Germans gave them a new name, "Teufel Hunde," and "Devil Dogs" they proved to be. — Stories of Americans in the World War (1918), p. 17. DIDONK It wasn't to be supposed that poilu would suit the American as a nickname for the French soldier. It doesn't have the tang or the snap the Yankee requires when he calls any one "out of his name" in a friendly manner. To the Americans the poilu has become a "didonk," and the term is used quite affectionately. 56 NEW WORDS SELF-DEFINED Explaining the origin of "didonk" a woman correspon- dent of the Chicago Tribune writes: Trust our men to have a phrase all of their own for the poilu. They call them " didonks " with all the affection which an applied petit nom can have. The derivation of the word is amusing. All French poilus address you in the second person singular. The camaraderie of war has broadened the use of this tutoiement until only your superior officer gets addressed as "you." And every poilu's first phrase, whether he is asking you for a drink of red wine, or about to grill you within an inch of your life for having broken some rule, begins, "Dis done /" — the equivalent of our national "say." Hence the nickname. — Literary Digest, May 25, 1918. DIGGER* Time and again those fellows [Australians] would go over the top with us. And when we called them diggers to their faces they'd have gone sheer to — oh, almost any place for us. It was a term of comradeship to them. Sort of made them pals with us. — Capt. Ed- ward M. Kent, New York Times, Feb. 23, 1919. DIXIE We had no more than arrived in the line than the cook of the first gun crew we struck brought out a "dixie" of tea and an unlimited supply of bread and butter and jam and invited us to fill up. "Dixie" is the soldier's *Se« Aussie. NEW WORDS SELF-DEFINED 57 name for the camp kettle used in the British army. — Captain Herbert W. McBride, The Emma Gees (1918). DO A BUNK "One of our decoys was sunk," said Capt. Porterfield as he scratched his head. "Rotten shame it was, too, but they never got near me. When I located them and gave the proper directions, I put about and did a bunk." "You did a what?" " Did a bunk. Sloped off; beat it while the beating was good," replied the skipper, smiling. — New York Sun, Dec. 18, 1918. DOG ROBBER I said it was a big happy family, and so it is, but as in all happy families, there are servants, so in the British Army there are also servants, officers' servants, or "O. S.," as they are termed. In the American Army the common name for them is "dog robbers." — Arthur Guy Empey, Over the Top (1917). "Listen, Sergeant, I'll tuck you into your beds if you want me to. I've a rotten voice, but I'll sing hymns if anybody asks me to. It's up to you fellows to use me for anything you want to. That's my job." "Huh, sort of dog robber for the outfit, eh?" "Exactly that," said Blue, and he grinned. Now a dog robber is not an important person in our Army, nor is he especially popular. He is the striker — 58. NEW WORDS SELF-DEFINED the personal attendant of an officer — and it is looked at by the men as a soft job and something of an un- dignified job. — Clarence B. Kelland, American Boy, February, 1919. DOUGHBOY Naut. and Colonial. A boiled flour dumpling. 1685 Ringrose Bucaniers Amer. II. IV. 4. These men . . . had each of them three or four Cakes of bread (called by the English Doughboy's) for their provision and Victuals. 1697 Dampier Voy. (1729) I. V. 110. This Oil served instead of Butter, to eat with Dough- boys or Dumplings. 1880 BlacJcw. Mag. Jan. 72. Quite a gourmet in the matter of doughboys and duff. 1887 Pall Mall Budget 22 Aug. 13-2. Each man had also a dough-boy made with \ lb. of flour and boiled in the soup. — The Oxford Dictionary (1897), complete entry under doughboy. I have been greatly interested in the letters recently published on your editorial page regarding the word "doughboys," which is now universally used by ini- tiated persons in referring to our soldiers in France. As a matter of fact, the term "doughboy" is more popular with our fighters in khaki than any other ex- pression that has so far been minted. Real soldiers are proud to be called "doughboys." I spent several months in France as a war correspondent for a New York newspaper, and interviewed scores of officers and privates on the subject of a fitting name for NEW WORDS SELF-DEFINED 59 our troops in France. They were all unanimously in favour of "doughboy" and equally unanimous in their loathing of "Sammy," which they regarded as "lady- like." In an article of mine that was published several weeks ago I wrote: " Up to this time our troops in France have either been referred to as 'Sammies' or merely as doughboys. This latter expression was formerly used as two words — dough boy — and had long been known among sol- diers in the Regular Army. However, it was a term that was only applied to infantrymen and could not, therefore, fit the army as a whole, although it is now being used to designate any sort of American soldier. Its origin is shrouded in mystery, but there have been many explanations — all different. It is definitely known, however, that the expression was in use among our soldiers for many years before the first A. E. F. came to France." — Edwin Carty Ranck, New York Times, Sept. 28, 1918. A doughboy is an American soldier, and American sol- diers, infantrymen, artillerymen, medical department, signal corps sharps, officers and men alike, all are called doughboys. Our cartoonist is one, so is General Pershing. The term "doughboys"* dates back to the Civil War when army wit was aroused by large globular brass buttons on infantry uniforms. •Not the term but perhaps the application of the term to the American soldier. The word itself was in use, as the citation from the Oxford Dictionary shows, in 1685. 60 NEW WORDS SELF-DEFINED Somebody (he must have been a sailor) dubbed the buttons "doughboys" because they reminded him of the boiled dumplings of raised dough served in ships' messes and known to all sailors as doughboys. Originally it referred only to an enlisted infantryman, but the A. E. F. applies it to all branches and all grades of the service. — The Stars and Stripes, Paris, quoted in Stories of Americans in the World War (1918), p. 59. DRIFT METER Many new instruments have been devised for aircraft. These include . . . drift meters, which indicate the side slip of the plane through the air. — Problems of Aeroplane Improvement, by Naval Consulting Board of the U. S., August 1, 1918. DRIVE Drives will continue though the war passes. The force of their successful example leads them to be taken over for other purposes, and we hear of a great drive for funds for missionary work decided on by the Prot- estant Churches of America. "The people of the country," says the Episcopal Recorder (Philadelphia), "have become familiar with 'drives,' and if the welfare organizations, led by the Y. M. C. A., can raise two hundred millions, there should be no difficulty in accomplishing this purpose." — Literary Digest, January 18, 1919. Elle [1'ardeur guerriere] est encore stimulee par les "drives" de la Croix-Rouge, de 1' Y. M. C. A., des NEW WORDS SELF-DEFINED 61 Knights of Columbus, de toutes les organisations charitables que la guerre a fait naitre. — Emile Hovela- que, Revue des Deux Mondes, Feb. 15, 1919. DRUM-FIRE In no previous war have the reports from artillery followed each other so closely as to resemble the roll of a big drum. This phenomenon, first called "drum-fire" by the Germans, and now generally known by this name, is analyzed by G. F. Sleggs in the London Times. Incidentally he shows that the sharp, distinct report necessary to its production is heard only in front of the gun, so that each side hears "drum-fire" only from the other's artillery. The further one goes toward the rear of his own line, the more distinctly he hears the enemy's fire and the louder it comes out above the muffled roar of his own guns. . . . "This term (Trommelfeuer)" says Mr. Sleggs, "was first used by the Germans to describe the effect of our massed artillery on an unprecedented scale on the Somme." — Literary Digest, Oct. 27, 1917. DUD "Don't be a growler or a sea-lawyer or a drifter or a dud" (Superintendent E. W. Eberle). Incidentally, "dud" is a new word — one coined on the western front to designate a shell which has failed to explode. But the Superintendent's own definition is "A shell without a bursting charge, a dummy or a blank or a dead one, 62 NEW WORDS SELF-DEFINED having no 'pep,' no 'punch,' no initiative." — The Log, Sept. 27, 1918. U. S. Naval Academy, Annapolis, Md. DUM-DUM BULLETS During their advance the Americans had been fired upon by Austrian machine guns using dum-dum bullets. Major Somerville of Seattle has forwarded a number of the bullets to the headquarters of the American Military Mission. The bullets were manufactured two years ago, and each cartridge has a steel jacket containing four square slugs. — With the Allied Armies in Venetia, Nov. 1, 1918 (Associated Press). DUMMY COMPASS For this purpose the "dummy compass" is employed, a card upon which the circle of the horizon is marked off in sectors like the pieces of a pie. It is vital that when a lookout sights a submarine he should be able to sing out the position, so many points off the bow or abaft the beam, in order that the gunners may instantly operate the training-gear and waste no precious seconds of time before the spotter begins sending his ranges. —Ralph D. Paine, The Fighting Fleets (1918), p. 389. E EAGLE The first Eagle was launched from the Ford plant on Rouge River near Detroit. It is promised that soon others will follow and the fleet of destroyers material- ize. . . . These boats are 200 feet long, 26 feet breadth, 18 feet depth and 9 feet draft. They are to be driven by turbine engines and are expected to make 18 nautical miles an hour. — Naval Institute, Annapolis, September, 1918. Page 2106. EATABLES In France we make no attempt to interfere with this; we content ourselves with devising a pronounceable variation of the existing name. For example, if a road is called La Rue de Bois, we simply call it "Roodiboys," and leave it at that. On the same principle, Etaples is modified to "Eatables," and Sailly -la-Bourse to "Sally Booze." — Major Ian Hay Beith, All In It! K (1) Carries On (1917). ECOLE DE PERFECTIONNEMENT Schools where the pilots are trained on the modern ma- chines — Scoles de perfectionnement as they are called — 64 NEW WORDS SELF-DEFINED are usually an annex to the centres where the soldiers are taught to fly, though there are one or two camps that are devoted exclusively to giving advanced in- struction to aviators who are to fly the avions de chasse, or fighting machines. — James R. McConnell, Flying for France (1916). EGG See ash-can. ELPASOITIS Like other nervous disorders, Elpasoitis may pass from a comparatively harmless stage into a dangerous con- dition; dangerous, that is, for the innocent bystander. At Chifu, on the edge of a Russo-Japanese war, its illusions were on the whole amusing. Whatever the lies that came out of Port Arthur in a junk they carried no menace to the rest of the world. But El Paso is always an irritant, and may conceivably become a source of general infection. El Paso's self-induced agues and chills take on body as they spread over the wires. From such a consummation it is to be hoped that both the United States and Mexico may be spared. — New York Evening Post, March 24, 1916. EMBUSQUE But the words which have created a whole literature in the trench journals and in the Parisian papers are per- mission, embusque", and marraine. . . New slang, too, since the war, is the word embusqaS, which means NEW WORDS SELF-DEFINED 65 one who, through cowardice or selfishness, plus in- fluence, stays at home, or obtains some situation in the army far from the front. It is a term of opprobrium worse even than Bosche. — Gelett Burgess, Century Magazine, Sept., 1916. The more I saw the splendour of the fight the French were fighting, the more I felt like an embusque — what the British call a "shirker." So I made up my mind to go into aviation. — James R. McConnell, Flying for France (1916). Among these men there were some, no doubt, who be- long to the class called by the French "embusques." Through scheming or influence they managed to secure for themselves, and to remain in, "shell-proof" posi- tions. — New York Times, Nov. 28, 1918. EMMA GEE I verily believe that that battalion, and especially the "Emma Gees," was about the toughest lot of soldiers who ever went to war. Emma Gee is signaler's lingo for M. G., meaning machine gunner. — Captain Her- bert W. McBride, The Emma Gees (1918) .* What is patter than "Emma Gee" for a machine gun, for instance? Or "O pip" for an observation post? One must admit that there's some class to these terms, and while you've got your goggles on this column just take it from me that there's more "pep" of the same *The following "new names for old letters," says Captain McBride, are officially recognized in the signaling code: A = ack; B = beer; D=don; M=emma; P=pip; S= esses; T=tock; V = vick; Z=zed. 66 NEW WORDS SELF-DEFINED mustardy standard where this came from. — William Philip Simms, Baltimore Star June 22, 1917. ESCADRILLE Trips are made in squadron formation and sham battles are effected with other escadrilles as the smallest unit of an aerial fleet is called. — James R. McConnell, Flying for France (1916). EVACUATE Private William A. Anderson, Co. B, 131st Infantry. — For extraordinary heroism in action at Chipilly Ridge on Aug. 9. He rendered service as stretcher bearer under heavy shellfire, continuing on duty for forty- eight hours until complete exhaustion compelled him to be evacuated. Colonel Hamvel V. Ham, 109th Infantry. — For ex- traordinary heroism in action near Magneux, on Sept. 6. Having been severely wounded and unable to move, he remained for ten hours on the field of battle, directing the attack, and refused to be evacuated or receive medi- cal attention until his men had been cared for. First Lieutenant Lewis B. Cox, 6th Infantry. — For extraordinary heroism in action during the St. Mihiel offensive, between Sept. 12 and 15. From the begin- ning of the battle till evacuated from the field severely wounded he displayed exceptional heroism, bravery, and devotion to duty of the highest order. — General Pershing in awarding the Distinguished Service Cross. FABRICATED SHIP What is a "Fabricated" Ship? Are not all ships fabri- cated ? Doubtless ; but the word as used recently in this phrase is a technical term. Fabricated ships are, or maj 7- be, made in great numbers with interchangeable parts, and are related to ships built in the ordinary way much as an Elgin or a Waltham watch movement is to one turned out by a Swiss maker. — Literary Digest, Dec. 29, 1917. Recently the term "fabricated ships" has become one of public interest. A fabricated ship may be defined, briefly, as a ship on which the work of punching and shaping the plates and, to some extent, assembling and riveting, is done in a fabricating shop, ordinarily em- ployed for bridge or tank work, as distinguished from the usual practice of doing it in a shipyard punch shop. — Shipping, Nov. 24, 1917. So far as the writer knows, the fabricated ship is a product of American progressiveness. — Marine En- gineering, Dec, 1917. FAG During this time we had two ten-minute breaks for rest, and no sooner the word, "Fall out for ten minutes," 67 68 NEW WORDS SELF-DEFINED was given, than each Tommy got out a fag and lighted it. . . Tommy is a great cigarette smoker. — Arthur Guy Empey, Over the Top (1917). FARMERETTE Perhaps the greatest joy in the work lies in the health and vigour of it and in the peaceful sense of repose that comes when it is done. Moreover, a farmerette can always watch the fruition of her labour. Ten rows planted, six rows hoed, four rows dug and harvested. The accomplishment is definite and can be measured. The farmerettes are producing food which creates the bodies and minds of mankind and sustains them, world without end. — Mrs. Marguerite Wilkinson, In- dependent, Sept. 14, 1918. FEATHER However, if the submarine is moving beneath the water, with periscope up, the protruding periscope leaves a wake which is known navally as the "feather," and the feather is often discernible when the periscope is not. — Samuel G. Blythe, Saturday Evening Post, Oct. 12, 1918. FEENEESH Seefineesh. FERVENTS D'AVIATION There are those among us whom the French call grace- fully the fervents d' aviation, who believe that the Golden NEW WORDS SELF-DEFINED 69 Age of flying is to come immediately on the declara- tion of peace. — C. G. Grey, Illustrated London News, October 5, 1918. FIFTY-FIFTY Any American citizen who thus feels should be sent straight back to Germany, where he belongs. We can have no "fifty-fifty" allegiance in this country. Either a man is an American and nothing else, or he is not an American at all. — Theodore Roosevelt, The Foes of Our Own Household (1917), p. 62. These young French women make excellent helpmates. In France it has been the custom of generations for the wife to be in reality a fifty-fifty partner with her hus- band. She not only does the woman's part in the domestic machinery but she takes a lively and active interest in all his business undertakings. — Washington Post, March 31, 1919. FILLEUL* General Pershing has put a ban on romance by urging the soldiers' Godmothers' League to cease its organized attempt to introduce into the American army the insti- tution of Filleul and Marraine. — Nation, Jan. 3, 1918. FINEESH, FEENEESH But without question the most useful word in France to-day is one called "fineesh!" It is a combination of •See marraint. 70 NEW WORDS SELF-DEFINED finis and finish. Literally it means all gone. If you ask for jam and there is no jam, the jam is fin-eesh. If you get to a station too late to catch your train, the train is fin-eesh. In a country where the unexpected is to be expected, it fits a limitless number of occasions. It has met the situation. It is as useful as "C'est la guerre!" — Roy S. Duestine, Scribner's Monthly, November, 1918, p. 558. "Na pu, feeneesh, Monsieur. Journaux anglais na pu. Tomoro, sans faute, Monsieur. Voulez-vous francais? Le Matin? Bon. Au revoir, Monsieur." And the French newsboy is gone, sold out as usual. — Punch, London, July 12, 1916. FIRST LUFF In the language of the "gob" the Commanding Officer is the "Skipper"; his Executive Officer is the "First Luff."— Oscillator, Cambridge, Mass., Feb. 22, 1919. FIRST TO FIGHT Everybody knows how well the Marines have been advertised. Their slogan, "First to Fight," has drawn thousands of the best men of the nation into that branch of the service — men who would have gone to any other branch without much consideration, save for the fact that the fighting reputation of the Marines has been constantly harped upon and constantly lived up to by that organization. It would be an unpardon- able sin for one member of the Marines to cause by his actions any one to doubt their courage and daring. — NEW WORDS SELF-DEFINED 71 Vincent de P. Fitzpatrick, Baltimore Sun, Oct. 27, 1918. FISH See look-sea. FIX Generally speaking — and all speaking about this phase of it must be very general — the object of the chase of a chaser or a flock of them is to get what is called a "fix." That is, they go out and patrol in a specified area for the purpose of locating submarines. Now the manner of getting a fix is extremely interesting and quite efficient. Also, it is not for discussion here. It is sufficient to say that the completed "fix" locates the submarines with reasonable accuracy — that is, determines the place beneath the water where the submarine is lurking, of the route on which it is proceeding. When the fix is de- termined the chasers go to it with all speed, and it begins to rain depth charges on Fritz. — Samuel G. Blythe, Saturday Evening Post, Oct. 19, 1918. FIXATION PROCESSES The specific task to which the chemist and physicist addressed themselves was that of finding some way in which this great reservoir of inert nitrogen gas about us could be tapped to obtain these active nitrogen atoms which, combined with oxygen and hydrogen atoms, make up nitric acid, or, combined with hydrogen alone, constitute ammonia. The various procedures which have been worked out to accomplish this end are col- 72 NEW WORDS SELF-DEFINED lectively known as "fixation processes," and the ex- pression "fixation of atmospheric nitrogen" has found its way frequently into everyday print. The details of these processes do not lend themselves to description in non-technical terms, but they may be understood in outline. — Henry P. Talbot, Atlantic Monthly, Novem- ber, 1918. FLIGHT SURGEON Flight surgeons represent a new war type which appeals to the imagination as does no other kind of medical man. Up to this time not much has been told about them. The evolution of the army medical officer to the flight surgeon has been rapid. It is only a short time ago that the term was first heard, but already a special flying machine has been devised for the flight surgeon — a flying ambulance — so he may aid injured airmen. —New York Times, Sept. 22, 1918. FLIVVER There was another young officer — Chisholm call him — who played poker occasionally. He commanded a flivver, which is the service name for the smaller class of destroyers, the 750-ton ones. In our navy there are plenty of your officers who will tell you that they never built destroyers which keep the sea better than that same little flivver class. Young Captain Chisholm on the 323 was one. — James B. Connolly, The U-Boat Hunters (1918). NEW WORDS SELF-DEFINED 73 FLU Why does the influenza take the young and the strong and let the old go free? Is it because the old soon will die in any case? And why and how has this influenza gone over the world? Governor Riggs, of Alaska, says that all the Eskimos round Nome City are dead of the "flu." Why? — Saturday Evening Post, March 1, 1919. FLYABOUT Now that the stress of wartime production is over, this particular concern is offering flying boats, seaplanes, and chummy flyabouts for commercial or pleasure pur- poses. "An appropriate Christmas gift for your son or daughter," is the concluding sentence. We have passed from the best-girl buggy to the chummy road- ster, and it is only a step further to the chummy fly- about. — Indianapolis News, Jan., 1919. FOKKER For several months last year the supremacy of the air was in the hands of the Germans by reason of their Fokkers. These were monoplanes with a wing spread slightly under forty feet, fitted with only an 80-100 horsepower rotary engine. — Bertram W. Williams, Scientific American, Oct. 6, 1917. 74 NEW WORDS SELF-DEFINED FOX TROT In a late edition of your Review Mr. Walter Winans gives the origin of the name "fox trot" as derived from that of the "pace" of a horse, and that the dance known as "Fox trot" is derived from that movement. I am sorry to have to disagree with that statement. The facts are that the dance was invented early in 1914 by a New York vaudeville dancer named Mr. Fox, and the selection of the steps was arranged by him quite independently of anything zoological. — Charles d'Al- bert, Saturday Review, London, Dec. 11, 1915. FOYER DES ALLIEES Such also is the "Foyer des Alliees,'* which the young women of the Y. W. C. A. have established for our em- ployees and ammunition workers, with the intimate and constant support of some devoted Frenchwomen and of some leaders of industry. — Gustave Rodriguez, Scribner's Magazine, Nov., 1918, p. 555. For the women munition workers the Y. W. C. A. has founded the Foyers des Alliees in a score of places, and the Frenchwomen are flocking to them with unbounded gratitude, happy beyond expression because of the new comradeship. — Joseph H. Odell, Atlantic Monthly, November, 1918. FOYER DU SOLDAT If one wants to know all the things that a man in a Foyer du Soldat (as the American Y. M. C. A. serving NEW WORDS SELF-DEFINED 75 the French is called) does, the answer can be found in the dictionary — by looking up all the verbs. — J. M. Moore, Christian Observer, Oct. 23, 1918, p. 16. L'Union franco-americaine des foyers du soldat inaugu- rait il y a quelques jours, au camp 4e Cercottes, le 1.000" foyer du soldat installe par ses soins. — Nouvelles de France, Oct. 3, 1918. FRIGHTFULNESS* One stands in awe of such completeness of savagery; one begins to understand what is meant by the term "f rightfulness." As far as eye can reach there is nothing to be seen but decayed fangs, protruding from a swamp of filth, covered with a green slime where water has accumulated. This is not the unavoidable ruin of shell-fire. No battle was fought here. The demoli- tion was the wanton spite of an enemy who, because he could not hold the place, was determined to leave nothing serviceable behind. — Coningsby Dawson, Out to Win (1918). The German doctrine of Rightfulness was based upon the Roman tyrant's maxim, "let me be hated so long as I am feared." The German Kaiser and his people now find themselves hated and laughed at, which is un- pleasant. — Saturday Review, London, Oct. 26, 1918. FRITZ See Jerry. *Sec SchrecklichkeU. 76 NEW WORDS SELF-DEFINED FUNKED The New York Globe is impressed by some of the in- scriptions scribbled by soldiers on the little wooden crosses that mark the graves of other soldiers, which a Canadian officer has brought from over there. . . And another, markedly different in sentiment, reads: Churchill funked it — he lies at rest; Nobody grieved when he went west; Whence he came or where he goes Nobody cares, nobody knows. "All over France are little wooden crosses raised for unknown soldiers and simple verses scribbled by un- known rimesters. And the soldiers who lie under the little wooden crosses — with the few exceptions who funked, like Churchill — and the soldiers who, with gaiety, pencilled the little epitaphs upon the wood — all are heroes." — Literary Digest, Oct. 19, 1918. FUNK HOLE Tommy's term for a dugout. A favourite spot for those of a nervous disposition. — Arthur Guy Empey, Over the Top (1917). "Hungry? I'm so gol-darn hungry I could eat a boche ! " grumbled Corporal Jack Evans as he huddled in a funk hole beyond the Vesle. — Peter Clark Macfarlane, Saturday Evening Post, Jan. 18, 1919. NEW WORDS SELF-DEFINED 77 FUNKY VILLAS These men were not romantic fellows, like Greek heroes. They were bootmakers from Leicester and lacemakers from Nottingham and potters from Arnold Bennett's five towns, where life is rather drab and its colour is monotone. I met them several years ago near Armentieres and afterward at "Funky Villas," as they call Fonquevillers, near Hebuterne. — Philip Gibbs, New York Times, Oct. 4, 1918. FUTURISM Futurism, which is nearly related to Cubism, again, rests upon a theory of knowledge and reality. The doctrine is Heraclitan. Everything is a flux; nothing stops for a moment. Everything moves, and the artist with it. His task is merely to make the flux visible. Practically, the pictures are like selected fragments of many objects shaken in the kaleidoscope. A night out would be represented by the wheels of the cab and the horse's ears, the penumbra of the street lamp, and the slipper of the danseuse, a musical phase from the orchestra, and the cork of the champagne bottle. — Frank Jewett Mather, Jr., Nation, Feb. 3, 1916. G GADARENING We are, I believe, awakening to the dangers of this "Gadarening," this rushing down the high cliff into the sea, possessed and pursued by the devils of — machinery. — John Galsworthy, Another Sheaf (1919). GADGET "Well, he's had a lot of it — Philippines, Boxer Re- bellion, Vera Cruz, and Hayti. You know, in the Marines, when we can't think of the generic name for anything, we call it a 'gadget' or a 'gilguy.' Now, this man has won a Congressional Medal and has another coming. When we sighted the French coast, I was standing where he couldn't see me, just behind him; and I heard him say, while he looked over things in general : " 'I got one o' them gadgets now an' one on its way. I wonder if I'll get another over here.' " — R. G. Kauff- man, Our Navy at Work (1918), p. 194. GARS Balsley bore up bravely, and became the favourite of the wounded officers in whose ward he lay. When 78 NEW WORDS SELF-DEFINED 79 we flew over to see him they would say: II est un brave petit gars, Vaviateur amSricain [He's a brave little fellow, the American aviator]. — James R. McConnell, Flying for France (1916). GAS-MASK The army gas-mask is by no means the protective appli- ance that it is popularly believed to be. It does not afford universal protection against all gases, nor can it ever be used safely in low oxygen atmospheres. It furnishes no oxygen to the wearer and can only remove comparatively small percentages of poisonous gas from inhaled air, usually less than 1 or 2 per cent. — U. S. Bureau of Mines, Pittsburg Experiment Station, Feb. 11, 1919. GET IT With the American Army in France, August 31. — (By mail) — "Got it" is the only way doughboys ever refer to being killed in battle. One never hears them men- tion the words "dead" or "killed." And to express the fact of being wounded they invariably say "hit," qualifying it as "bad" or "not much." "Where is old Buck? " a doughboy will ask his "buddy" after he has been away at a hospital or on leave. "Oh, he got it when we came through that third town back there," his "buddy" replies. "Well, where's old Steve?" "Why, he got hit when we was crossing the Ork." 80 NEW WORDS SELF-DEFINED "Was he hit bad?" "No, not much; the arm — but he won't lose it. Back in a couple of weeks." "Any others that I know get it?" " Oh, I guess a couple of lads you know got it, but most of them only got hit." "Most of them hit bad?" "No, not much — most of them." — Baltimore Star, Sept. 19, 1918. See gadget. GILGUY GIMPER "A gimper is a bird who would stick by you through anything. If you were up in the air and ran into a dozen Boches and were getting the worst of it, perhaps, and the fellow with you stuck with you and gave it to them until the Heinies went back into Hunland, you'd know he was a gimper. "If he didn't have motor trouble, and his gun didn't jam, or he didn't accept any one of a dozen good excuses for zooming off home and leaving you to do the same if you could get away, he'd be a gimper all right. A gim- per is a scout who does everything just a little better than he has to. "We call this the Gimper Squadron, because every man has to prove himself a gimper by his actions."— Lieut. Eddie Rickenbacker, New York Evening Sun, Aug., 1918. NEW WORDS SELF-DEFINED 81 GIN Paris, Sept. 5. — Devilish inventions, everyone a hidden engine of death and typical of Hun frightfulness, are left behind by the Germans every time they retreat. Traps and snares are everywhere as the Americans and their Allies penetrate the German lines. Commonest is the "gin," a board set horizontally at the entrance to the dugout and having the appearance of a seat. But the moment one sits down the board yields a fraction of an inch, just enough for a nail, hidden at the other end, to scratch a charge of explosives and set it off. — Edward M. Thierry, Baltimore Even- ing Sun, Sept. 26, 1918. GLISSADE See chandelle. GNIOLE More difficult is the case of gniole, brandy — the correct spelling, according to Mr. Dauzat, is niole — which is only less common than pinard in proportion as the occasion for its employment is less frequent. Gniole was also unknown in Paris before the war. It is a Lyons word of at least fifty years' standing, and is apparently derived through the Savoy patois niola from nebula by* a neat interchange of cause and effect. — ■ London Times, review of Dauzat's L 'Argot de la Guerre (1918). 82 NEW WORDS SELF-DEFINED GOB Sir: In answer to your article in the Tribune of this date, "Why Is a Gob?" The name "gob," which has been applied to the American sailorman for so many years, it is believed originated from the Chinese word "gobshite," and was first used on the American Naval Asiatic Station. Have no information as to just why the name became applicable to the American Navy and to no other, but recent conversation with some of the "old salts" leads me to think that this was the true origin of the word. I do know that the American man-o'-warsman prefers the name of "gob" to that of "Jackie." L. C. B., Receiving Ship at New York, Jan. 13, 1919. — New York Tribune, Jan. 16, 1919. A gob is a sailor, a man of the American Navy, a blue- jacket, and the term is self -applied. It is the generic term for all men in the service, up to those who wear the gold on their sleeves ; and even so, the sailors often speak of the austere commanding officer as the Main Gob. The use of it primarily is to show the sailor's detestation for the usual designation of them — jackies. Nothing rouses the ire of a sailor so quickly as to call him a jackie. He doesn't like it, and will not have it. No diminutive, as expressed by the "ie," for him. It doesn't fit cither with his own assumption of his man- liness or with the fact of that manliness. . . . NEW WORDS SELF-DEFINED 83 So far as I could learn, the designation of gob by the sailors for themselves has been prevalent for the past five or six years. Before that the American sailors called themselves flatfeet as a protest against the Jackie business. Navy philologists give various explanations of the derivation of the term, and nobody is quite clear where it came from, though there is evidence that it originated on the China coast. Its application is uni- versal, and when one American bluejacket speaks either of himself or of another in the service he invariably says gob. "He's a hell of a gob," says one to another, "to let a limey take a girl away from him." — Samuel G. Blythe, Saturday Evening Post, Oct. 5, 1918. GOLDBRICK But Wally sidled up to one of the M. P.'s exhibiting his wounded arm as credentials. Ordinarily he avoided "goldbricks" as the doughboys call the military police. — George Pattullo, Saturday Evening Post, Sept. 21, 1918. GOTHA A promising young poet of my acquaintance, who in the midst of war's obsessions still finds time and taste for the exercise of his art (he is in a Government office), has allowed me to see the opening couplet of what I understand to be a very ambitous poem. It runs as follows : — "Though overhead the Gothas buzz, Stands London where it did? It does." 84 NEW WORDS SELF-DEFINED Many good judges of poetry to whom I have quoted these lines think them very clever. — Punch, London, Oct. 3, 1917. GO WEST* "Gone West" they call dying out here — we rarely say that a man is dead. — Coningsby Dawson, Carry On (1917). One of your cigarets was smoked by a dying man. His passing was vastly different from the soldier's death of fiction. There was no calling for mother, wife, or sweetheart. He praised your cigaret, cursed feebly because his fresh milk tasted sour to him, and quietly "went west." — Lieutenant Joseph Rodman, Letter, Literary Digest, October 26, 1918. GROUND-HOG DAY See whiz-bang. GROUSE "Yesterday, little old Paris — day before yesterday, back from Nice," murmured Chignole. "To-day, ap- prenticed to death. — I'm not grousing; far from it! Still, I will confess, I was afraid to come back to the front." — Marcel Nadaud, Atlantic Monthly, Novem- ber, 1919. GUS See Radadou. ♦See funked. NEW WORDS SELF-DEFINED 85 GUY But that is not the whole picture of those thousands of men. In the foreground radiated their devotion to one another, their homesickness, their sense of humour sav- ing many a hopeless situation. "Buddy" they always called one another. Your "guy" was your very best pal. "Hey there, Sister," would be shouted at me as I went through the ward, "don't forget to give my guy in the corner some cigarettes, too." — Marion B. Cothren, N. Y. Times Magazine, March 2, 1919. H HEDGE HOPPING I went "hedge hopping" last night. "Hedge hopping" is the fanciful name for flying low. I think it is per- haps the most exhilarating — and dangerous — of all phases of flying, even including acrobatics. It is the splendid sensation of tremendous power and matchless speed. No other sensation is to be compared with it. — From an American in France, Independent, Nov. 16, 1918. HEINIE See gimper. HELLO GIRL Washington, Sept. 8 — American girls operating tele- phone exchanges for the expeditionary forces in France have transmitted to the United States through the War Department a protest against their designation as "Hello Girls." — Associated Press, Sept. 8, 1918. HE-MAN Theirs is a he-man's job; and they are tackling it like red-blooded, two-fisted fighters. They are heroes — 86 NEW WORDS SELF-DEFINED 87 all of them. — Robert G. Skerrett, Saturday Evening Post, Oct. 26, 1918. H HOUR See the jump off. HINDENBURG LINE There are two Hindenburg lines. One is a great system of trenches and dugouts and gun-emplacements and observation-posts stretching across northern France, from Arras to Reims, before Cambrai and St. Quentin and Laon. To the German Army it means security, a sure defense, an opportunity to prepare for new offen- sives. The other is a spiritual line — the confidence of Germany in its military prowess, in the ability of its military leaders, in its capacity for outfighting and out- lasting all adversaries. In the race for the Hindenburg line in France our editors see the Allied generals gaining on the Teutonic retreat specialists, and they wonder how much of his Army Ludendorff will be able to take back with him to the old line of March 21, and how long he will be able to keep it there. — Literary Digest, Sept. 7, 1918. HIT See get it. HOOSGOW " We're here, you and I, to obey orders and do our work. You'll get plenty of shooting before you go home again, 88 NEW WORDS SELF-DEFINED don't worry. Only you'll do it the way you're told to. After all the time you've spent in the hoosgow since you joined, I should think you'd know that." — Albert Payson Terhune, Saturday Evening Post, Oct. 19, 1918. But Cash Wyble was breaking himself of the guard- house habit. Months had passed since he had paid his last visit to the hoosgow. — Albert Payson Terhune, Saturday Evening Post, Jan. 25, 1919. HOOVERISH, HOOVERISM, HOOVERLZE It is timely, too, for the Chinese way of using meat as a condiment favours Hooverism. . . . "As our men are being scientifically trained that not one shot be wasted, so must our women be scientifically trained that not one ounce of food be wasted," is a sentence from the Dedication of Sally Keene's "Eat to Live"; and the same Hooverish words might have been used as motto in four other books on our list. [The caption of the list is "Hooverized Cook Books."] — Nation, Nov. % 1918. Strenuous efforts are now being made to teach the nation to avoid waste, and in my household we have coined the word "Hooverize," corresponding to " Fletcherize," a word greatly in vogue some years ago. — Christian Observer, Louisville, Ky., Sept. 5, 1917. HOP, HOP OFF Trepassey, N. F., May 15. — The "jinx" which visited the NC-4 on the initial "leg" of the navy's transatlantic NEW WORDS SELF-DEFINED 89 flight Thursday, compelling her to put in at Chatham for repairs, turned its attention to-day to the NC-1 and NC-3, holding them harbour-bound while the NC-4 caught up with them for the big overseas "hop." . . The appearance of the NC-4, which had been sighted shortly after the NC-1 and NC-3 taxied down the har- bour, was believed to have influenced Commander Towers in his decision to postpone the "hop off,' so that all three planes might start together. — New York Times, May 16, 1919. HOUSEHOLD ASSISTANT "Household Assistant" is a new term for the tabooed word "servant" or its successor "domestic helper." — Outlook, N. Y., Oct. 23, 1918. HUMDINGER Say, Skotchie, I forgot to mention these American nurses. They are humdingers, I want to tell you. And, Skotchie, these girls are all for you here. There isn't anything they won't do for you. — Letter from Private A. B. Callow, Literary Digest, Nov. 16, 1918. Another old French sergeant stayed with us two days. He was a humdinger. He had a gray beard and was well up in years; but there he was in the front trenches. It seemed that back in 1914 he had been in the com- missary behind the line because he was considered too old. But the boches burst through and captured him. Somehow he managed to escape. — George Pattullo, Saturday Evening Post, Nov. 2, 1918. 90 NEW WORDS SELF-DEFINED HUN As soon as you come to blows with the enemy he will be beaten. No mercy will be shown! No prisoners will be taken ! As the Huns, under King Attila, made a name for themselves, which is still mighty in traditions and legends to-day, may the name of German be so fixed in China by your deeds that no Chinese shall ever again dare even to look at a German askance. . . . Open the way for Kultur once for all. — The Kaiser, Speech to his soldiers at Bremerhaven before their departure for China, July 27, 1900. If for any reason whatever we fall short of victory — and there is no half-way house between victory and defeat — what happens to us? This. Every relation, every understanding, every decency upon which civi- lization has been so anxiously built up will go — will be washed out, because it will have been proved unable to endure. The whole idea of democracy — which at bot- tom is what the Hun fights against — will be dismissed from men's minds, because it will have been shown in- capable of maintaining itself against the Hun. It will die; and it will die discredited, together with every belief and practice that is based on it. The Hun ideal, the Hun's root-notions of life, will take its place throughout the world. Under that dispensation man will become once more the natural prey, body and goods, of his better-armed neighbour. Women will be the mere instrument for continuing the breed, the vessel of man's lust and man's cruelty; and labour will become a thing NEW WORDS SELF-DEFINED 91 to be knocked on the head if it dares to give trouble, and worked to death if it does not. And from this order of life there will be no appeal, no possibility of any escape. This is what the Hun means when he says he intends to impose German Kultur — which is the Ger- man religion — upon the world. This is precisely what the world has banded itself together to resist. It will take every ounce in us; it will try us out to the naked soul. — Rudyard Kipling, Address at Folkestone, England, London Morning Post, March, 1918. In "The Rowers" [by Kipling], originally published in the London Times in 1902, at the time when Germany wished to embroil England with the United States over the Venezuela Claims, the word Hun was used for the first time to describe the Germans. The use of this epi- thet was based on the Kaiser's message to his troops at the time of the Boxer Rebellion, when he urged his men to remember the name of Attila. — World's Work, July, 1919. HUNLAND See gimper. HUSH-HUSH SHIP* Now and again through the war we heard of the "great mystery" of the British Navy — the "Hush-Hush Ships." The secret was well kept. Occasionally we met a British naval officer and our subtle but persistent questions were answered by baffling silence and the broadest of grins. To-day the menace has departed *See"Q"*6»p. 92 NEW WORDS SELF-DEFINED and the secret is out. In the London Times "Barti- meus" — a British naval officer who wields a pretty pen — tells us how the Q-boats killed the (/-boats. He writes: There was a day, now happily past, when the submarine scourge was broadcast upon the seas; then the country turned for its salvation to the Navy, upon which, under the good providence of God, it had grown accustomed to rely in most of the crises of its history. It [the Navy] argued that a man-of-war could be dis- guised as a tramp steamer and carry concealed arma- ment. — Literary Digest, Jan. 4, 1919. The Graf Spee, on the other hand, is apparently of an improved type. She was recently referred to in the Vienna Fremdenblatt as an " Ueber-Schlachtkreuzer," or a super battle-cruiser, which suggests that she is a so-called "hush-hush" ship, of very high speed and great gun-power. — Engineer , July 26, 1918. HYPHEN You have heard a great deal about the hyphen. I, for one, have never been deceived. The number of persons of really divided allegiance in this country is very small. — President Wilson, Washington, May 1, 1916. HYPHENATE The crusade against "hyphenates" will only inflame the partial patriotism of trans-nationals, and cause NEW WORDS SELF-DEFINED 93 them to assert their European traditions in strident and unwholesome ways. — Randolph S. Bourne. — Atlantic Monthly, July, 1916. Camps like this are the best possible antidotes to hyphenated Americanism. The worst thing that could befall this country would be to have the Ameri- can nation become a tangle of jangling nationalities, a knot of German-Americans, Irish-Americans, English- Americans, and French- Americans. — Theodore Roose- velt, Plattsburg, N. Y., Aug. 25, 1915. HYPHENISM Neither Englandism nor New Englandism, neither Puritan nor Cavalier, any more than Teuton or Slav, can do anything but furnish one note in a vast sym- phony. The way to deal with hyphenism, in other words, is to welcome it, but to welcome it in the sense of extracting from each people its special good. — John Dewey, Proceedings National Education Association, 1916. IDDY-UMPTY My duty as supernumerary signal officer is to superin- tend the laying of cable that will insure telephonic communication both behind and on the line. Our playful friends, the infantrymen, call us the "Iddy- Umpties" or the "Buzzers." To the War Office we are known as the R. E. Signalers, and you may recognize us easily by the blue-and-white bands that adorn our left arms. — Captain A. P. Corcoran, Ladies' Home Journal, Nov., 1918. IMAGISM, IMAGIST Yet the infuriated critics of Imagism suffered still more. It was with a morning-after feeling that most of them realized that, in trying to protect the sacred future from such horrors as* "using the exact word," from allowing "freedom in the choice of subject," from a poetry that was "hard and clear" and from the im- portance of "concentration," they were actually at- tacking the best traditions of their beloved past. . . . The quoted words that follow are taken from the credo of the lmagists as found in their first anthology, Some Imagist rods (1915). 94 NEW WORDS SELF-DEFINED 95 "We are not a school of painters," the Imagists de- clared; and in this very self-conscious denial they drew attention to their primary weakness, for much of their work was definitely derived not merely from painting but from the technique of painting. They were too often completely satisfied to make one isolated image serve as a work in its entirety; they spent all their energies polishing one detail of composition which a more robust creator would have thrown off as an illumi- nating bit to be fused with something warmer and larger. In their striving to produce an atmospheric effect, a single line of movement, a mere flash of colour, and considering such productions the Ding an sich, an end in itself, they showed their very preoccupation with painting and music, and with the most tenuous aspects of these. Their uncoordinated striving to re- produce such effects revealed an art less concerned with its own power than with ideas taken from other arts, and it disclosed, as The New Republic pointed out, "a certain poverty of poetic feeling ... a certain slenderness and intellectuality of inspiration not com- patible with the making of vital poetry." — Louis Untermeyer, The New Era in American Poetry (1919). INCLINOMETER Many new instruments have been devised for aircraft. These include . . . inclinometers, which indicate the angle of the plane. — Problems of Aeroplane Improve- ment, by Naval Consulting Board of the U. S., Aug. h 1918. 96 NEW WORDS SELF-DEFINED IN THE PINK The mud-soaked "old Bills" of the trenches, cheer- fully ignoring vermin, rain, and shell fire, continue to wind up their epistles with, "Hoping this finds you in the pink, as it leaves me at present." They are always in the pink for epistolary purposes, whatever the strafing or the weather. That's England; at all costs, she has to be a sportsman. I wonder she doesn't write on the crosses above her dead, "Yours in the pink: a British soldier, killed in action." England is in the pink forthe duration of the war. — Contngsby Dawson, Out to Win (1918). They are as fit and as keen as when they left England for the north, and as for the Americans they are in the pink. — Samuel G. Blythe, Saturday Evening Post, Nov. 2, 1918. IRON RATIONS ] The regiment had been marching, digging, or fighting, day and night for seventy-two hours, snatching mo- ments of loglike slumber and gnawing ravenously from time to time upon its iron rations, as the compact re- serve of food which each soldier carries upon his back is called, until now that was gone and for twelve hours the men had scarcely tasted food. — Peter Clark Mac- FARLANE, Saturday Evening Post, Jan. 18, 1919. IRREDENTIST, IRREDENTISM I am so little an Irredentist that if Austria were to offer us Trento, Trieste, Istria, and Dalmatia on con- NEW WORDS SELF-DEFINED 97 dition that we abstain from entering the war against the central empires, I should be in favour of refusing. The problem of the war is not a problem of Irreden- tism. It is the problem of Italian freedom. — Giuseppe Prezzolini, New York Times Current History, Dec, 1915. Trieste for the Italians has been the symbol of "irre- dentism," of land unredeemed, in the Istrian peninsula, and throughout its 500 years of domination by Austria the city has steadfastly refused to abandon its Italian nativity. — New York Times, Nov. 4, 1918. ITALIA IRREDENTA These territories [Trentino, Trieste, and Istria] are subject to Austria and as long as Italy was allied with Austria she was kept from any attempt to gain this Italia irredenta or unredeemed Italy, and thus so to round out her boundaries as to include within them people who are Italian in race, in language, and, prob- ably, in sympathy. — C. D. Hazen, Modern European History (1917), p. 441. JACK JOHNSON See crump, JAKE See no bloody bom JAWBONE I have been interested in reading contributions to your columns regarding the origin of the expression "jawbone," meaning credit. The Kansas City Star says it is a "new" slang expression used in the army, and one of your contributors says it originated with the American army in the Philippines twenty years ago. There is nothing new or mysterious about the expres- sion. It means to obtain credit at a store by talk or "jawbone." When I was a boy in the then territory of Washington nearly forty years ago, it was a common expression in the neighbourhood in which I was raised. — New York Times, March 8, 1918. The Salvation Army, says Colonel Barker, literally "went to the front" for those soldiers. "Without any delay or 'red tape' we sent $5,000 worth of canteen supplies to these men and 'jawboned' the entire battalion. To 'jawbone' means, in the dough- 98 NEW WORDS SELF-DEFINED 99 boy vernacular, 'to trust.' Nor did we have any reason to regret our prompt action, for these doughboys paid us every cent they owed just as soon as they received their money. Each man acted as his own bookkeeper and their accounts were straight as a string." — Literary Digest, Oct. 19, 1918. / JAZZ The latest international word seems to be "jazz." It is used almost exclusively in British papers to describe the kind of music and dancing — particularly dancing — imported from America, thereby arousing discussion, in which bishops do not disdain to participate, to fill all the papers. While society once "ragged," they now "jazz." In this country, though we have been toler- ably familiar with the word for two years or more, we still try to pursue its mysterious origins. Lieut. James Reese Europe, late of the Machine-Gun Battalion of the loth Regiment, tells Mr. Grenville Vernon, of the New York Tribune,* that the word comes from Mr. Razz, who led a band in New Orleans some fifteen years ago and whose fame is perpetuated in a somewhat modified form. — Literary Digest, April, 1919. I wish to cast a brighter light among those who are so very prejudiced against popular music — so-called ragtime or jazz. — G. L. Simonds, Baltimore Evening Sun, Nov. 21, 1918. If the pilot finds himself with a suddenly stopt pro- *See Tribune, March 30, 1919, and Item, New Orleans, March 9, 1919. 100 NEW WORDS SELF-DEFINED peller or "dead stick," he will ordinarily first do a nose dive, "jazzing" the throttle meanwhile, to see if the tremendous blast of air on the propeller will start the motor. Frequently the attempt is successful. — Power Plant Engineering, Chicago, March 15, 1919. A Port in Scotland (by mail), Oct. 19. — According to H. J. Hollinshead, of Evanston, 111., secretary in an American Young Men's Christian Association naval hut somewhere in Scotland, the canny highlander is suc- cumbing to the lure of our navy's jazz bands, and in many a "wee hoose on the heather" the bagpipe stands in the corner unused. Baltimore Evening Sun, Nov. 4, 1918. JAZZ BOES Yankee "Jazz Boes," as American coloured troops are called in France, constructing a railway behind the front lines. — Under a picture in New York Times, Nov. 3, 1918. JERRY To the English Tommy a German is a "Fritz," and "Fritz" he is to the Canadians. The Scotch call him an " Allyman" (probably after the French " Allemand") but he is nobody to the Irish but a "Jerry." — William Philip Simms, Baltimore Star, June 22, 1917. But we haven't space to print all that our men say about Fritz — or Jerry, as he is oftener called now. Their verdict is unanimous. — Independent, Nov. 16, 1918. NEW WORDS SELF-DEFINED 101 Secretary of War Baker in an address at the Southern Hotel last Saturday said that French officers and states- men had told him that the Americans at Chateau- Thierry had saved Paris and made victory certain for the Allies in much shorter time than they ever had expected. The Americans not only killed and wounded and captured the Boches at Chateau-Thierry and drove them back in the direction of the Vaterland, but they did infinitely more. They broke the morale of the Hun. In the slang of the day, they "got Jerry's goat." — Vincent de P. Fitzpatrick, Baltimore Sun, Oct. 27, 1918. JIMMY VALENTINE* Jimmy Valentine is not always the unregenerate yegg we assume him to be. Very often he is a closer student of what is being done in the scientific world than many of the gentlemen set to catch him. For it is necessary, in Jimmy's calling, that one keep abreast of all the latest inventions and, as fast as a new discovery threat- ens to destroy one's means of livelihood, to find some way to circumvent it. So we find Jimmy learning new tricks as the new tricks are needed. A yegg is nothing if not progressive. — Literary Digest, Dec. 30, 1916. JITNEY The origin of the word "jitney" stumped the lexicog- rapher of the Literary Digest. He hesitated as follows: "Jitney" is said to be slang for "a nickel." It is used "See A Retrieved Reformation, by O. Henry (1903). 102 NEW WORDS SELF-DEFINED to designate a type of motor vehicle that carries passen- gers for 5 cents. The origin of the term is uncertain; it may have been derived from a personal name. The origin of "jitney?" Somelbody else besides the lexicographer of the Literary Digest has made a guess. He suggests — nay, asserts — that it is a corruption of a Russian word for a coin having approximately the value of 5 cents. But here's another effort: "The term is said to have originated with the gamblers of the Southwest, and is a contraction of two Mexican words meaning lowest value, as until recently the nickel or 5-cent piece, designated as a 'jitney,' was the smallest change in circulation in that section . ' ' And still another : "The word comes from the slang of the street arab, who has a name for every coin. A 'meg' is a cent, a 'jit' or 'jitney' is a nickel, a 'dimmo' is a dime, and a 'cute' is a quarter." The word, with the progress of civilization, if you will have it so, has now become firmly fixed in the American language. State Senator Price, of Kansas, has risen to call Mr. William Allen White a "jitney statesman." Mr. White embraces the label with eagerness, and by that act seems to give a certain respectability and dig- nity to the appellation. — Washington Post, March 28, 1915. JOCK Then all along our line came a cheer and our boys came over the top in a charge. The first wave was composed of "Jocks." They were a magnificent sight, kilts NEW WORDS SELF-DEFINED 103 flapping in the wind, bare knees showing, and their bayonets glistening. . . . One young Scottie, when he came abreast of my shell hole, leaped into the air, his rifle shooting out of his hands, landing about six feet in front of him, bayonet first, and stuck in the ground, the butt trembling. — Arthur Guy Empey, Over the Top (1917). JOHN Lieut. Daniel E. Walsh, Three Hundred and Thir- teenth Infantry, sends an inkling of what the Seventy- ninth Division has been doing in France. In a letter to his parents, Mr. and Mrs. M. E. Walsh, West- minster: "I have some great tales to tell you all when I get back. You know they call a man who has seen no service a 'John.' Well, I am not a 'John' any more." — Baltimore News, Oct. 24, 1918. JONGLEUR When the first detachments of lassies arrived near the firing lines and began to turn out doughnuts by the thousand, the French soldiers stood about watching in amazement. The dexterity of the cooks they characterized as juggling, and "le jongleur" was heard on every side. The American soldiers think it is the greatest fun to assist in cooking the doughnuts and they carry wood and water, and help mix the dough. — Private John Allen, Leslie's V/eekly, Oct. 19, 1918. 104 NEW WORDS SELF-DEFINED JOY-STICK A bare minute of this (Sidmore always cut the prelimi- naries to a minimum), then the speed of the plane in- creased, it nosed up into the wind, the pilot pulled the "joy-stick," as the lever which operates the elevating planes is called, and the machine took the air. — D. H. Haines, American Boy, Feb., 1919. C.'s bus was then seen to heel over into a vertical dive, and plunge down, spinning rhythmically on its axis. Probably he was shot dead and fell over on to the joy- stick, and this put the machine to its last dive. — "Con- tact" (Alan Bott), Cavalry of the Clouds (1918). Papa Charles pulled the joy-stick; the aeroplane nosed up, leaped, took a tail-dive of several hundred metres. — Marcel Nadaud, Atlantic Monthly, Nov., 1918. JUGO-SLAV Together with the Croats and Slovenes of southern Austria-Hungary, the Serbs are called the Jugo-Slavs (yo6 go-slavz) or South-Slavs (jugo means "south") to distinguish them from the Czechs, Poles, and Rus- sians of the north. There is, however, a strong feeling of relationship between these two great Slavic groups. — A School History of the Great War (1918) by McKinley, Coulomb, and Gerson, p. 61. THE JUMP OFF With the American Armies in France, September 17. — "Zero hour" and "over the top" are expressions which NEW WORDS SELF-DEFINED 10J have passed from the American Army after long pop- ularity with the British. America's attack in the Lorraine sector has brought out typical American expressions. "Over the top" is now "the jump off" and "zero hour" has changed to "H hour." — Baltimore Star, Sept. 17, 1918. JUSQU* AU BOUT M. Lloyd George adressant recemment un nouveau message au peuple britannique, 1' invitait a, com- battre jusqu' au bout ces violences feroces. — Nou- velles de France, October 3, 1918. La cinquieme annee de guerre trouve tous les peuples de F Entente maitres de leurs nerfs, surs de leur volonte, resolus a aller jusqu' au bout. — Revue des Deux Mondes, Paris, Aug. 1, 1918, p. 483. JUSQUABOUTIST* As a reasonable jusquaboutist I have some misgivings about Mr. Henry Arthur Jones's farce-parable, The Pacifists. — Punch, London, Sept. 12, 1917. ♦See bitter-ender. K KAMERAD A comrade is an equal, entitled to be received and treated on a basis of equality. A comrade is a loyal, trustworthy fellow, who keeps his word and plays no foul tricks. A comrade is a cheerful companion, a pleasant roommate, a person with whom one can safely and happily share bed and board and life's adventure. Has Germany's conduct in this war given her any right to use the word "Kamerad" as a sign of surrender? No. It is a gross exaggeration, a cowardly subterfuge, a typically Teutonic form of impudence, all the more disagreeable because it is probably unconscious. What the German soldier really means when he holds up his hands is that he is sick of fighting, he has had enough, he wants to quit and to be let off as easily as possible. There are several good old German words to express this state of mind and the corresponding action. Let him learn to use one of these. The most appropriate would be "iibergeben," which not only signifies to surrender, to capitulate, to hand over, but also, by a singular irony of language, means to be sick at the stomach, to vomit, to throw up. 106 NEW \YORDS SELF-DEFINED 107 That's the word, Wilhelm and Fritz! Capitulate and disgorge ! Neither in the surrender of a German soldier nor in the capitulation of the Germany which has made this war, can we admit the word "Kamerad." It is premature, puerile, and preposterous, a gross exaggeration.— Henry van Dyke, New York Times, Oct. 26, 1918. Suddenly, to his consternation, eight Bodies came out of a shell hole right in front of him. He started to "kamerad," but to his surprise all eight of the enemy threw up their hands and "kameraded" He took heart, began to realize what the situation was, and turned the crank of the camera as fast as he could. Shrieks and more " kamerading" from the Huns. They thought he had a machine gun on them! It was a laughable sight to see this moving-picture man marching behind the eight Boches, all their "hardware" on him, and they carrying his moving-picture apparatus. — Captain Carroll J. Swan, My Company (1918). K-BOAT "The 4th August, 1916, saw the commissioning of a boat which was a revolution in submarine design. This was the first K-boat. This class was designed for the expected fleet action: their qualities were to be — that they should have several knots in hand over the speed of the battle fleet, that they should be seaworthy and able to cruise with the fleet, and that they should have the necessary submarine qualities to enable them to 108 NEW WORDS SELF-DEFINED deal with the high sea fleet when it should be met. These qualities they have; but it is regretted that the enemy gave them no chance of trying their luck in ac- tion." The foregoing description omits to mention one of the most interesting features of the "K" class, viz., the installation of steam machinery for surface propulsion in place of the internal combustion engines fitted to all previous British submarines. — Engineer, Feb. 21, 1919. KEEWEE, KEWIE "Did you know, Dan," Grayson asked in a tone loud enough so that the three victims would be sure to hear, 'that there's a new test for aviators?" "No," answered Dan. "What is it?" "They call it the 'sea test.' If a man misses more than two meals on the way across they make him a 'keewee' !" Grayson made use of a slang word of the aviation camps, the keewee being an Australian bird which has wings but doesn't fly, and the term being one of good-natured scorn applied by the fliers to the men in the non-flying branches of the service. — Donal H. Haines, American Boy, March, 1919. A "kewie bird" is a chap who flies little but always comes back with a tale of terrible fighting whenever he gets into his machine. "We call such fliers kcwie birds," explained one of the real birdmen who never talks to himself, "because the kewie is a bird inhabiting the shores of Newfoundland. NEW WORDS SELF-DEFINED 109 It always flaps its wings and squawks a lot but never rises from the earth." — Baltimore Star, Oct. 9, 1918.' KITE BALLOON While admittedly less spectacular than the aeroplane, the cumbersome kite balloon, tugging away at its moor- ing cable in a gentle breeze, is invaluable in the present war. For artillery spotting] and general observation work it is in some respects superior to the aeroplane; but its employment is quite apart and distinct from that of the heavier-than-air craft. Kite balloons are pri- marily intended for the regulation of artillery fire, particularly in connection with heavy batteries. Whereas the observer in an aeroplane is constantly shifting his position while on observation duty, travel- ling all the while at a high rate of speed, the kite balloon crew has all the advantages of a fixed post, which makes for maximum accuracy in spotting shell hits. — Bertram W. Williams, Scientific American, Oct. 6, 1917. KULTUR Current discussion of the worth of German culture has been almost hopelessly clouded by the fact that when a German speaks of Kultur he means an entirely differ- ent thing from what a Latin or Briton means by culture. Kultur means the organized efficiency of a nation in the broadest sense — its successful achievement in civil and military administration, industry, commerce, finance, and in a quite secondary way in scholarship, letters, and art. Kultur applies to a nation as a whole, im- 110 NEW WORDS SELF-DEFINED plying an enlightened Government to which the in- dividual is strictly subordinated. Thus Kultur is an attribute not of individuals — whose particular inter- ests, on the contrary, must often be sacrificed to it — but of nations. Culture, for which the nearest German equivalent is Bildung, is the opposite of all this. It is an attribute not of nations as a whole but of accomplished individ- uals. — Frank Jewett Mather, Jr., New York Times Current History, Jan. 9, 1915. The right translation of Kultur seems to be everything in organized civilization except culture. For true cul- ture the Prussian has no use — he despises and dislikes it; its opposite, which is aggressive war, he thinks noble and exhilarating. — Sir Oliver Lodge, War and After (1918). LASHAY A plane which slews round after landing, as planes are very likely to do, makes a cheval de bois or "wooden horse" — behaves, that rs to say, like a horse on a merry- go-round. A pupil who makes the required number of perfect landings, coming down like a grouse, lightly, head into the wind, without banging his tail, "making a cheval," or scraping his wings, or nosing over, is lache — "released," that is to say, and ready to pass on to the next field. And you hear some American sergeant coming up to go on with the score bawl out: "Hey, Bill! How many lashays have you got?" — Aethue Ruhl, Collier's, Sept. 21, 1918. LAZLOISM The word is coined in London to represent "a friendly enemy alien." The contradiction in such a phrase ex- presses what the people regard as a large class who ought to be interned. The distinguished portrait painter, Mr. Philip Lazlo, who happens to typify this class, has been domiciled in England for a number of years where he achieved great popularity as the portrait- Ill 112 NEW WORDS SELF-DEFINED ist particularly of the men and women of the smart set. — Literary Digest, Dec. 15, 1917. The public is very patient, but there is a limit to its complaisance, and it is quite evident to the man in the street that Lazloism may be as dangerous as Boloism; that the former, indeed, may be the undesirable parent of the latter. We distrust the whole legend of the "friendly enemy alien." We "don't believe there is no sich person." He is a myth invented to explain the battalions of the uninterned, and we are coolly asked to assume that an uninterned enemy is necessarily a friend. — Pall Mall Gazette, London, Nov., 1917. LEATHERNECK Joe, as they is so few things you know, not meanin' you're dumb or the like, only thick, I will tell you what a Leatherneck is. Joe, a Leatherneck is the baby they send for when Mexico or some of them other South- American joints which is under the protection of Uncle Sam gets fresh and tries to go Republican. The Lea- thernecks is rushed special delivery on a battleship and lands at this joint and the next mornin' the papers says, "A detachment of United States marines was landed at Porto Bananas to put down a revolution. They was no trouble. The revolutionists was buried in lots of a thousand each. One marine got wounded. He stumbled over the Porto Bananas army whilst comin' back to his ship." — H. C. W 7 itwer, Marines' Bulletin Holiday Number, 1918. NEW WORDS SELF-DEFINED 113 LES TERRIBLES The 32d Division has thus won a splendid name for bravery and initiative. This has been recognized by the French title "Les Terribles," which has been be- stowed upon it. No unit in our army presents men of better physique than these Indians, lumberjacks, and farmer lads from the Northwest. They will be heard from again. — Edwin L. James, New York Times, Sept. 9, 1918. LIAISON v "Liaison," as an English word, is the most interesting of all. Hitherto we have borrowed it in two senses — in the culinary sense and in the amorous sense. Now we are using it in a military sense, in which an "officier de liaison" means a staff officer charged with the duty of linking together different armies or units. The amo- rous sense needs no explanation. — London Times, April, 1915. As we were supposed to keep up a liaison with the next post where the sergeant was, I crouched by a tree to sort of get a hold of myself and decide what to do, for I couldn't keep up the liaison myself and watch the post, too. — Letter from Corporal H. E. Hilty, Literary Digest, Nov. 16, 1918. We have come to the conclusion that the mere ma- chinery of liaison officer and occasional meetings of chiefs of staffs is utterly inadequate and inefficient for the purpose of securing real coordination. You must 114 NEW WORDS SELF-DEFINED have a permanent body constantly watching these things, advising upon them and reporting them to the Government, whether our front, the French front, or the Russian front is most concerned. — Lloyd George in House of Commons, Nov. 19, 1917. LIBERTY CABBAGE "Liberty cabbage," made in Germany and there still known as sauerkraut, has been served at many Ameri- can army messes during the week, five carloads of the edible having been left behind by the withdrawing German army. — Associated Press, New York Times, Nov. 30, 1918. LIBERTY MOTOR As for the Liberty Motor, its story is almost too well known to readers of the World's Work to bear repetition here, even fragmentarily. Suffice it that when peace came we had built 15,131 of these 440-horsepower engines as well as 16,683 of other types; that we had under way a programme calling for 51,100 Liberty Twelves and 8,000 Liberty Eights and the machines were coming through at a rate faster than 5,000 a a month, with the reasonable certainty that before summer the production would be 10,000 a month or more. The British and the French were buying Lib- erty Motors from us, redesigning their airplanes to take the higher-powered engine. June would have seen the American Expeditionary Forces equipped with five or six times as many service airplanes as the NEW WORDS SELF-DEFINED 115 Germans had ever been able to put into service at one time, all fitted with Liberty Motors, while the Allies would have been flying more Liberty-motored planes than of all other types of engine. — Frank Parker Stockbridge, World's Work, March, 1919. LIMY, LIMEY* There was always a shortage of fresh vegetables. On English ships — even to the present day I take it, or to my personal knowledge as late as 1912 — a pannikin of lime juice was served out at high noon to each mem- ber of the crew as a help against scurvy. Hence the nickname lime- juicer, or more simply, limy. But scurvy will never break out as long as there are fresh vegetables at hand. — R. M. Hallet, Saturday Evening Post, Feb. 22, 1919. As soon as the street lamps were lighted, squads of the American navy patrol began to stroll about, swinging short, heavy sticks with a loop at one end and display- ing no sympathy whatever for the shipmate who steered a zigzag course in imitation of a destroyer work- ing offshore or who loudly announced that he could whip any three "Limies" that ever trod a British deck. — Ralph D. Paine, The Fighting Fleets (1918), p. 87. LOOK-SEE "In about five minutes we'll come up and take a look- see [stick up the periscope], and if we see the bird, and •Seeaofc. 11G NEW WORDS SELF-DEFINED we're in a good position to send him a fish [torpedo], we'll let him have one. If there is something there, and we're not in a good position, we'll manoeuvre till we get into one, and then let him have it. If there isn't anything to be seen, we'll go under again and take another look-see in half an hour. Reilly has his instructions." (Reilly was chief of the torpedo-room.) Henry B. Beston, Atlantic Monthly, Nov., 1918. LOUNGE-LIZARD It will occur to him that he wasn't vexed then by the task of trying to keep his trousers from bagging at the knees, a thing which no human being except a lounge- lizard has ever succeeded in doing for a whole day on a stretch. On second thought, I would remove the lounge-lizard from the category of authentic human beings. I will concede he is a mammal, but further than that I would not care to commit myself. — Irvtn S. Cobb, American Magazine, March, 1919. LOW VISIBILITY The German battle fleet, aided by low visibility, avoided a prolonged action with our main forces. — British Admiralty's Report on Battle of Jutland, London, June 2, 1916. It is not a nice position for the head of a large corpora- tion to take, but he is following historically in the footsteps of some other Western Union presidents, one of whom deflected the genius of Elisha Gray from NEW WORDS SELF-DEFINED 117 developing the telephone. Another president, of similar "low visibility" completely failed to encourage the genius of Edison, who was forced to work else- where than in the telegraph business, and whose won- derful achievements since are known to all mankind. — New York Evening Post, Dec, 1918. LUNATIC FRINGE See cubist. M MAHANISM AND MOLTKEISM The Germans, although they adopted his [Admiral Mahan's] ideas before the war, later claimed to repudi- ate them, and some of their writers insisted that the struggle was between "Mahanism and Moltkeism," that is, between Mahan's idea that sea-power is decisive, and Moltke's policy of exclusive reliance on land forces. — Sidney Gunx, Naval Institute, Annapolis, Md., Nov., 1918. MANDATARY, MANDATORY The method is to place such [backward] peoples under the tutelage of more advanced nations called manda- taries, which will act under charters granted by the Council, and will report to a mandatory commission which will assist the mandatory nation and enforce the mandate. — Summary of League of Nations Covenant, by League of Free Nations Association, May 3, 1919, N. Y. MAOUS Stranger still is the history of another famous, non- Parisian word, maous, meaning big. Mr. Dauzat has 118 NEW WORDS SELF-DEFINED 119 tracked it down through maJwu (heavy, in the patois of Anjou) to mahaud. Mahaud is an adjective formed from the proper name Mahault, which was in the fifteenth century the name given to the clumsy bird, the goose, as the fox is called Renard. It is simply a variant form of the name Mathilde. — London Times, review of Dauzat's V Argot de la Guerre (1918). MARIE-LOUISE Another and older term for one of these youngsters is a Marie-Louise. Strictly speaking, he is a recruit called up ahead of the usual time, but, of course, this is the case in respect to all the new classes mobilized during the present war. The word goes back to the marriage of Napoleon with Marie-Louise of Austria in 1810, when France had exhausted her men and was calling up boys for the army. — Arthur H. Warner, New York Times, Oct. 7, 1917. MARMITE See copain. MARRAINE The marraine really needs a chapter to herself. She and her adopted filleul have furnished the great jokes and the prettiest romances of the war. It all began ser- iously and even sadly enough. The pathetic condition of the soldiers from the invaded Northern districts of France appealed immediately to the warm hearts of the Frenchwomen. . . . WTiy should not their 120 NEW WORDS SELF-DEFINED countrywomen who sympathized with their suffering, mental and physical, each adopt as a godson some soldier from the North, and treat him as a true god- mother should? So proposed a Paris paper. The idea, once started, spread like wild-fire. . . . The idea, of course, was captivating to the men in the trenches, and the scheme has now developed into the most picturesque flirting system ever conceived. — Gelett Burgess, Century, Sept., 1916. Our War Department, in stopping the correspondence of soldiers with strangers, had excellent reasons. The institution of godmothers does have the dangers that were pointed out, and in our Army the need is lacking. But conditions are not everywhere the same. A Bel- gian officer told me that 10,000 extra marraines would make an essential difference in the morale of the lonely little Belgian Army, many of whose members, shut off for four years from their families, feel wholly friendless in the world. — Norman Hapgood, Leslie's, Sept., 1918. MASSIF The war continues to enrich our vocabulary. News from France that the Allies have captured the entire ** massif" of Lassigny will cause another searching of dictionaries, by which it will be revealed that a massif is a mountainous group of connected heights, some- times isolated and sometimes forming part of a larger mountain system, more or less clearly marked off by valleys. The word is French in origin, but has been adopted without change by English and American NEW WORDS SELF-DEFINED 121 geologists and physical geographers. — New York Times, Sept. 17, 1918. Military authorities agree that the fall of the St. Gobain massif, recognized as the greatest natural defense on the west front, would precipitate a disaster which would utterly split the German armies and prob- ably throw hundreds of thousands of the enemy into a trap from which there would be no escape. — Baltimore Star, Oct. 11, 1918. Montdidier tombe, Humbert et Debeney ont pousse en direction du massif, repute si longtemps irre- ductible, entre Roye et Lassigny. — Nouvelles de France, Aug. 29, 1918, p. 163. MAXIMALIST See Bolsheviki. MENSHEVIKI* Bolsheviki is the name of a party of Russian revolu- tionists and means "much more." Mensheviki is also Russian and means "less," "minority"; in other words, the party that wants less than the Bolsheviki. — Literary Digest, July 13, 1918. MINIMALIST See Bolsheviki. MINNIE Fritz had a large and varied assortment of "minen- werfer" with which to entertain us at all hours, day and JSce BoUlieriki. m NEW WORDS SELF-DEFINED night. A good many people, even among the soldiers themselves, think that Minenwerfer or "Minnie" for short, is the name of the projectile or torpedo, while as a matter of fact, it is the instrument which throws it; a literal translation being "minethrower." — Captain Herbert W. McBride, The Emma Gees (1918). MINNOW-MINDED The minnow-minded, those who swim about in the shallows of superficiality, say France is imperialistic and attribute her relative decline to the greater industry and energy of the Germans, or to the low French birth rate, or to a dozen other French deficiencies. — New York Tribune, April 10, 1919. MIR He [the Russian peasant] grew up in the Mir, or village commune, which owned the inadequate stock of com- mon land as its collective proprietor and parcelled it out periodically in thin and hungry strips among its families. The institution is as ancient as our common Indo-European origin, and it has formed all the peas- ant's conceptions of property. To him the immoral, the antisocial thing is to seize and possess and bequeath more land than one can till. — H. N. Brailsford, New Republic, October 30, 1917. MONKEY MEAT We received the French ration, a part of which was canned beef shipped from Madagascar. It had a pe- NEW WORDS SELF-DEFINED 123 culiar taste which our men did not like. They called it "monkey meat" and it soon became known by that name through our Army. — Major-General Omar Bundy, Everybody's, March, 1919. MOOCHER Many "charges" have been "hurled" at Miss Jean- nette Rankin, at present a Representative in Congress from Montana, but the height and depth of political "slangwhanging" in the State can best be judged from the Fergus County Argus, which includes her among "political moochers." In the old English slang, to "mouch" was to steal, to prig. If one doesn't quite understand the process of importation, one sees how "moucher" passes into "grafter." Nobody has accused or could accuse Miss Rankin of having been that. As a politician, she may have been brought into temporary political alliances with thinkers of the Nonpartisan League school, found guilty of "graft" by politicians of the opposing school. So far as can be made out from Fergus County, however, she is a political "moocher" and "one of the most despicable of politicians," because she is a bolter. If a " moocher" is only a bolter, it is a title of honour and re- spect which Miss Rankin can accept with pride. — New York Times, Oct. 10, 1918. MOULDY A fairly extensive knowledge of torpedoes is necessary in order to pass for Sub-Lieutenant, and so we already 124 NEW WORDS SELF-DEFINED knew all about a "mouldy" as they are called in naval vernacular. — From Snotty to Sub, by "Heandi," London, 1918, p. 118. MYSTERY SHIP London, Nov. 30 (Associated Press) . — One of the most exciting chapters of the war against U-boats is a series of accounts of notable engagements between British decoy ships and the submarines, made public by the British Admiralty. While the whole story of the part played by these decoy vessels, "mystery ships" or "Q" craft has not been revealed, it is evident that several of them were used to lure the undersea craft to destruc- tion.— New York Times, Dec. 22, 1918. She's the plaything of the Navy, she's the nightmare of the Hun, She's the wonder and the terror of the seas, She's a super-censored secret that eludes the prying sun And the unofficial wireless of the breeze; She can come and go unseen By the foredoomed submarine; She's the Mystery-Ship, the Q-Boat, if you please. — Punch, London, Sept. 4, 1918. N NANCY The NC type of seaplane becomes at once the "Nancy" of aircraft in popular parlance. And what with this coinage and "blimps" and "hop offs," linguistic in- ventiveness goes on augmenting the vocabulary in the time-honoured way which is the despair of purists and precisians.— N. Y. World, May 17, 1919. NAPOO, NAPU "Napoo" — probably a contraction of "II n'y a plus" — is what Tommy says when he has finished his meal — enough, no more. When the meaning is extended, it becomes "dead" or "gone away.": — Atlantic Monthly, Feb., 1917. "But if there ain't many bullets buzzin' about 'ere now you can bet there was not long ago. There's a pretty big crowd of ours still lying na-poo-ed out there." — Boyd Cable, Grapes of Wrath (1917). Everywhere the new had gone ahead of me. Soldiers, assembled in the fields for morning parade, were flinging their steel helmets up and cheering. As they 125 126 NEW WORDS SELF-DEFINED marched through villages they shouted out to civilians, "Guerre fini, guerre fini, boche napoo." — Philip Gibbs, New York Times, Nov. 14, 1918. NAPOO-FEENEE It is amusing to consider the linguistic acquisitions of Mr. Thomas Atkins — whose strictly limited vocabulary was long said to contain only a single adjective — when he is forced into close contact with the soldiers and civilians of France. But of "il n'y a plus; c' est fini" he has made " napoo-feenee," which to him means "we are out of it entirely." — Brander Matthews, Mun- setfs Magazine t April, 1919. NAPPER When up against a Prussian regiment it is a case of keep your napper below the parapet and duck. . . . A lance-corporal in the next platoon was so enraged at the Captain's death that he chucked a Mills bomb in the direction of the noise with the shouted warning to us: "Duck your nappers, my lucky lads." — Arthur Guy Empey, Over the Top (1917). NC BOAT The Navy Department made public to-day a detailed description of the NC boats in which it was stated that they were "a wholly original American development," the design having been initiated in the fall of 1917 by Rear-Admiral David W. Taylor, chief constructor of NEW WORDS SELF-DEFINED 127 the navy. The plan for a transatlantic flight, it was said originally was formed as a war measure to get these giant aircraft to the scene of submarine opera- tions "had the German submarines gained the upper hand in 1918." The "NC" designation stands for "Navy-Curtiss," indicating that they are the joint production of the department and the Curtiss Engineering Corporation. They are not freak boats designed for record-breaking, the statement emphasizes, but a regular naval design capable of 60 miles an hour speed on the surface of the sea or 90 miles in air. — Baltimore Sun, May 15, 1919. NENETTE AND RINTINTIN But what has been the most characteristically French effect of the visiting gothas? The production of a pair of ridiculous little knitted dolls held together by a string of worsted ! You see them all over Paris. Their names are Nenette and Rintintin. They are sometimes half an inch high and sometimes as much as an inch. They are made in the brightest colours, they hang in all the shop-win- dows, they appear in the pages of the humorous papers, and they are absolute protection against air-raids! — Roy S. Durstine, Scribner's Monthly, Nov., 1918, p. 559. NEO-COPPERHEADS Racine, Wis., Sept. 27. — "Neo-copperheads," Huns within the gates of America who are preaching dis- 128 NEW WORDS SELF-DEFINED loyalty to the country's cause, and German-American newspapers which continue their anti-American propa- ganda were denounced by Theodore Roosevelt in an address he delivered here to-night at the annual meeting of the League of Wisconsin Municipalities. — Baltimore Sun, Sept. 28, 1917. V NEUTRALITY The basis of neutrality, gentlemen, is not indifference; it is not self-interest. The basis of neutrality is sym- pathy for mankind. It is fairness, it is good will, at bottom. It is impartiality of spirit and of judgment. I wish that all of our fellow citizens could realize that. — President Wilson, New York, April 20, 1915. NEWSFILM Some day we shall have daily newsfilms just as we have our daily newspapers. W T e shall be able to walk into a theatre or schoolhouse or library and see as well as read the news of yesterday in motion pictures. When sending films by telegraph, cable, or wireless becomes commercially practicable (and the demand will be met if it persists), it will be possible to sit in an auditorium or visitorium in New York or San Francisco, in London or Calcutta, and see on the screen the actual happen- ings of the day before on the other side of the earth. — Thomas A. Edison, Educational Film Magazine, N. Y., Jan., 1919. NEW WORDS SELF-DEFINED 129 NITROBYRONEL This explosive is now being tested for use by aviators and submarine chasers. Nitrobyronel blows a chamber twice as great as that caused by TNT (trinitrotoluol) until now the undisputed Colossus in that field. . . —New York Times, Aug. 18, 1918. NITZCHEVO, NITCHEVO "Nitzchevo," it does not mattery never mind, that word is the curse of Russia. Russia is burning! "Nitz- chevo!" The people are killed! "Nitzchevo!" The others are starving ! "Nitzchevo ! " — Scribner's Monthly, Nov., 1918. Bismarck had an unbounded admiration for Russia, holding her to be mighty, resourceful, immortal. If now alive, he would say that the Czar's resignation, the mad antics of the Bolsheviki, and the economic collapse of Russia — all that is "nitchevo." — New York Times, Dec, 1918. NIX, BO "Comin' fine if I can get you fellers to save that foot. She's smashed plenty. If you can't — all the same." "We'll run you right in." "Nix, bo, not me. I'm gettin' past all right, nothin' but my foot. You jest lemme be here and git busy 130 NEW WORDS SELF-DEFINED with them guys that's hurt. I'm on the waitin' list."- Association Men, Dec., 1918. NO BLOODY BON The great word of the Tommies here is "No bloody bon" — a strange mixture of French and English, which means that a thing is no good. If it pleases them it's Jake — though where Jake comes from nobody knows. — Coningsby Dawson, Carry On (1917). NO MAN'S LAND Colonel E. D. Swinton, of the British Army, is pop- ularly known as the father of the tank, as he had the distinction of raising and commanding the first tank unit. To Colonel Swinton also is attributed the in- troduction of the expression "No Man's Land" in alluding to the strip between the first-line trenches. — New York Herald, Oct. 28, 1917. No spoken word, no gifted pen or brush Of painter using pigments mixed in Hell, May e'er depict the horror and the hush That lie there when the guns have ceased their yell. — W. Stonehold, No Man's Land. "No Man's Land" holds no terrors for the feathered tribe. Birds build their nests in the corners of the wire entanglements, and sing merrily in the midst of the deafening cannonades. In fact, neither the strafing of the Hun nor the replies of the Allies' guns seem to NEW WORDS SELF-DEFINED 131 have any effect on the wild life of the war-stricken country. — Stories of Americans in the World War (1918), p. 12. NON-STOP London, June 16 (Associated Press). — London cele- brated to-day the achievement of the two British airmen who yesterday completed the first non-stop transatlantic flight, meanwhile preparing for a formal reception to the air victors, Captain John Alcock and Lieutenant Arthur W. Brown. — N. Y. Times, June 17, 1919. NOUS AUTRES, NOUS RESTERONS "Be steady, my children!" called out the captain. "The boats are for you! We officers will remain!" Perfect discipline reigned to the last moment. Not an officer survived the disaster [of the Leon Gambetta, April 26, 1915]. Out of a total complement of 821 souls, 684 brave officers and men were lost. The conduct of every man of the lost cruiser had been heroic, that of their officers magnificent. "Nous autres, nous resterons!" will forever remain the watchword of the French navy. — Robert W. Neeser, Scribner's Monthly, Nov., 1918, p. 616. o OH PIP* "Careful now. Keep down. If they spot this for an Oh Pip they'll shell us off the earth." — Boyd Cable, Grapes of Wrath (1917). OIL SLICK Further, the submarine when running close beneath the surface leaves what is known as an "oil slick." That is, the oil that is discharged in the exhaust floats on the top of the water in telltale streaks or blobs, and where there is an oil slick there also is likely to be a destroyer; pronto — and the merry little depth charge goes down, in the hope of shaking and shattering Fritz. "Oil slick" is American terminology. The British Admiralty did not approve of the use of the term at first, but nobody in the Admiralty could present a better descriptive phrase, so now it is officially recog- nized, but with due British reservations. After the war it will not be good form. — Samuel G. Blythe. Saturday Evening Post, Oct. 12, 1918. •See Emma Gee. 132 NEW WORDS SELF-DEFINED 133 OLONA The strongest, most durable textile fibre in the world, a native of our island territory of Hawaii, will be a can- didate for introduction in the fibre markets of the nations as soon as Yankee ingenuity discovers methods for cultivating and working it. Olona is its native name, and it has been prized by the islanders for gene- rations. Tests have shown it to be eight times as strong as ordinary hemp. . . . Its pliability is remarkable, and its durability is shown by the fact that olona fishing nets over a hundred years old are still used by Hawaiian fishermen. — Literary Digest, Nov. 30, 1918. ON ITS OWN, ON YOUR OWN It is an independent versatile institution operating on its own for its own needs. — Samuel G. Blythe, Saturday Evening Post, Nov. 2, 1918. Four taps meant, "I have gotten you into a position from which it is impossible for me to extricate you, so you are on your own." — Arthur Guy Empey, Over the Top (1917). ON LES AURA, ON LES A Most Parisians cannot yet realize in its entirety the transformation which Foch's leadership has wrought. They are too close to the facts. The Allies are not only winning: they have won. "On les aura!" "We shall have them!", the war cry 134 NEW WORDS SELF-DEFINED of the poilus for four long years, has been suddenly changed into a world-resounding, "On les a!" ("We've got them!"). — Cable from Paris to New York Times, Oct. 19, 1918. ON THE BLINK Putting a E/'-boat "on the blink" with a revolver shot from an airplane was the extraordinary feat of an anonymous British aviator. To hit the lens of a periscope from an aeroplane in flight is an accomplishment, to say the least; but there is such a thing as luck, and luck indeed favoured me to a most remarkable degree in this instance. — Literary Digest, May 17, 1919. ON THE LOOSE Bolshevism is a massing and turmoil of the criminal elements of society let out of jail and on the loose. — Franklin H. Giddings, Independent, Jan. 18, 1919. Soldiers generally think of themselves as men who, when their feelings are aroused, are privileged to use violence; and military discipline is necessarily so re- pressive that when men are temporarily released from it they naturally go on the loose. — New Republic, Dec, 1918. ORIENTATOR Washington, April 16. — The Army Air Service is experimenting with an "orientator" designed to give NEW WORDS SELF-DEFINED 135 flyers and prospective flyers all of the motions and bumps with which they meet during the most strenu- ous "stunt" flying in the air. A demonstration of the orientator was given at the Air Service to-day before a group of officers, employees, and newspaper men. The contrivance consists of a section of the fuselage of a modern airplane mounted on steel tubing in such a way as to permit it to loop the loop forward and back- ward, turn completely over from side to side, spin in a circle with the machine on an even keel, assume a "bank" for a turn in either direction, a nose dive, and other stunts. It is intended to give flying men confidence by demon- strating in a safe way all of the many motions to which they are subject in flight under battle or other condi- tions. — Baltimore Sun, April, 17, 1919. OUR GOD That expression, "our God," has some very interesting connotations. In many respects it is the keynote of the primitive paganism which has produced the tribal psychology of the German people of to-day. Many of the Kaiser's speeches, and the discourses of his minis- ters in the Reichstag and Prussian Diet, have wound up with a grandiloquent reference to "our God," who will see them through to victory, or to "the old German God," who confounds their mutual enemies. It is the concept of a distinctly tribal divinity, not a uni* 136 NEW WORDS SELF-DEFINED versal god. Their God is not the same one who pre- sides over the destinies of their enemies. It is not the God of all mankind before whom they lay their cause, basing their hope for success and for divine assistance upon the inherent justice of that cause. No, it is the god of a tribe who fights with them and for them, who holds up their right arm in battle and punishes the wicked enemy. — Philip Hemenway Chadbourn, Atlantic Monthly, Nov., 1918. OUTFIT I have yet to see a drunken American private in Paris. For the most part they are to be seen in groups of twos or threes, "gangs" or "outfits" as they call themselves, strolling about the streets. — Elizabeth Frazer, Satur- day Evening Post, Nov. 2, 1918. OVER THE TOP* It is generally the order for the men to charge the German lines. Nearly always it is accompanied by the Jonah wish," With the best o' luck and give them hell." — Arthur Guy Empey, Over the Top (1917). He pleaded that those who went over the top in bond drives and in giving money to support the war relief work again go over the top in the cause of the Kingdom of God. — Daily News, Greensboro, N. C, March 13, 1919. OZZIE See Aussie. *See the jump-off. PACIFISM, PACIFIST Gaston Moch, long an active French peaceworker, supplies the most definite information available as to the origin of the word. In an open letter to William Howard Taft, President of the League to Enforce Peace, dated from Neuilly-sur-Seine, May, 1917, he says: The words "pacifism" and "pacifist" were proposed about fifteen years ago by Emile Arnaud. I opposed them, finding them badly formed by the addition of suffixes "ism" and "ist" to a root "pacif," which exists in no language. But they responded to a need so that they were rapidly adopted, and I could not but support them. Taking these words as a cue, I went back through the literature and found that the word "pacifist" was first generally used in titles in the French periodical La Paix par le Droit in 1904. Earlier than that, discussion of what then came to be called the "mouvement paci- fiste" had referred to the "mouvement pacifique." — Denys P. Myers, New York Times, March 23, 1918. We who are working for international relations founded on justice and democracy repudiate the name " pacifist" 137 138 NEW WORDS SELF-DEFINED in its present interpretation. The words "pacifist" and "pacifism" came from Europe years ago in good standing, and in their original sense stood for world organization and the final abolition of war. They were, however, never satisfactory to most of the American workers because of their passive sound and capacity of being misconstrued. Recently these words have been made to stand for qualities both weak and bad — qualities from which in their original meaning they were as far removed as patriotism is from disloyalty. The vast majority of members of peace societies are as remote from "paci- fism" when interpreted as cowardice, sedition, and treason, as are workers for righteousness from pro- moters of unrighteousness. — Independent, Nov. 16, 1918. We have often wondered what the newspapers and the politicians mean by talking about pacifists. Who are the pacifists? Mr. Arthur Henderson was generally reckoned a pacifist, but in his latest speech he advocates "unconditional surrender" by the Central Empires. We do not believe there are a thousand pacifists in the kingdom. . . . Any British or French Govern- ment which proposed to make a premature peace would not live an hour. — Saturday Review, London, Oct. 26, 1918. What I am opposed to is not the feeling of the pa- cifists, but their stupidity. My heart is with them, but my mind has a contempt for them. — President Wilson, Buffalo, N. Y., Nov. 12, 1917. NEW WORDS SELF-DEFINED 139 PADRE You'll be pleased to know that we have a ripping chap- lain or Padre, as they call chaplains, with us. He plays the game, and I've struck up a great friendship with him. — Coningsby Dawson, Carry On (1917). PAN AM Panam [Panama-Eldorado] has now completely re- placed the familiar Pantruche as the Parisian's name for Paris. Dauzat's U Argot de la Guerre (1918). PARAVANE Soon after the British squadron started the "para- vanes" were dropped overboard. These devices are shaped like tops and divert any mines which may be encountered, for the vessels were now entering a mine- field.— New York Times, Nov. 21, 1918. Paravanes and the gear for handling them were per- fected during the first two years of the war at the dock- yard at Portsmouth, England, and in some quarters they are still known as the Burney gears, after Com- mander Burney, of the British Navy, the inventor. — International Marine Engineering, New York, April, 1919. PARLOR BOLSHEVISM There is so much "parlor Bolshevism" in our midst to-day, so much ignorant and irresponsible talk about socialism, "labor and capital," etc., that it behooves 140 NEW WORDS SELF-DEFINED the thoughtful to consider where all this intemperate thinking and agitating is leading. — Sara Norton, New York Times, April 6, 1919. PARLOR BOLSHEVISTS He [Mr. Roosevelt, in The Great Adventure] takes occasion to castigate particularly "parlor Bolshevists," those self-styled intellectuals who play with treason under the name of internationalism. — Scribner's Maga- zine, Dec, 1918. J PASS THE BUCK He [Major General James G. Harbord] did not "pass the buck," as they say in the army, which means that you shift the responsibility to another fellow. The phrase which is particularly applicable to the army system in peace time probably originated in the old poker-playing days of the frontier. It is possible to keep "passing the buck" in a circle for a long time if nobody finds "openers." — Frederick Palmer, Col- lier's, April 19, 1919. PEACE WITHOUT VICTORY Fortunately we have received very explicit assurances on this point. . . . They imply, first of all, that it must be a peace without victory. It is not pleasant to say this. I beg that I may be permitted to put my own interpretation upon it and that it may be under- stood that no other interpretation was in my thought. NEW WORDS SELF-DEFINED 141 I am seeking only to face realities and to face them without soft concealments. Victory would mean peace forced upon the loser, a victor's terms imposed upon the vanquished. It would be accepted in humiliation, under duress, at an intolerable sacrifice, and would leave a sting, a resentment, a bitter memory upon which terms of peace would rest, not permanently, but only as upon quicksand. Only a peace between equals can last. Only a peace the very principle of which is equality and a common participation in a com- mon benefit. The right state of mind, the right feeling between nations, is as necessary for a lasting peace as is the just settlement of vexed questions of territory or of racial and national allegiance. — President Wilson, Senate, Jan. 22, 1917. President Wilson's address to the Senate on January 22 aroused animated comment alike in the belligerent countries and in the United States. The Entente nations took vigorous exception to the phrase "peace without victory," and the Teutonic Powers, while rejoicing in that aspect, looked with disfavour upon the President's suggestion of autonomy for all nationalities, notably for the Poles. — New York Times Current His- tory, March, 1917. The book [The Foreign Policy of Woodrow Wilson, 1913-1917, by Edgar E. Robinson and Victor J. West] must be especially recommended to those casual read- ers and superficial thinkers who, allowing themselves to be unduly influenced by headlines in newspapers and the flippant comment of "the man in the street," still 142 NEW WORDS SELF-DEFINED sneer about such matters as certain phrases used by President Wilson at various times — "too proud to fight," "peace without victory," and that dealing with the aims of the belligerents. — New York Times Book Review, Jan. C, 1918. PELMANISM So ignorant is the world of its greatest men that it was only a day or two ago that we learned that Pel- manism was invented by a Mr. Ennever. Pelmanism was not really invented twenty years ago by Mr. Ennever, but three hundred years ago by Francis Bacon, the Viscount St. Alban. Bacon invented a system of inductive experiments by adopting which he declared that all men might become equally learned and efficient — " exaequat fere omnia ingejiia," it makes all brains almost equal, said he of his system. . . . Let us admit at once that there is no harm in Pel- manism; there may even be some good. But when we see the Pelman Institute spending weekly sums in advertising their wares which cannot be far short of £5,000, or £250,000 a year, we know that a very large number of people must be buying those wares, or the business would soon stop. — Saturday Review, London, Feb. 8, 1919. ~ PENGUIN First of all, the student is put on what is called a roller. It is a low-powered machine with very small wings. It is strongly built to stand the rough wear it gets, and NEW WORDS SELF-DEFINED 143 no matter how much one might try it could not leave the ground. The apparatus is jokingly and univer- sally known as a Penguin, both because of its humorous resemblance to the quaint arctic birds and its inability in common with them to do any flying. — James R. McConnell, Flying for France (1916). The penguins, of course, are part of the Royal Air Ser- vice. They are the birds that cannot fly. — Hamilton Holt, Independent, Dec. 14, 1918. PEP King George knew of the deeds of some of the ofEcers and that led him to speak of the great debt the British Empire owed to all its colonials. "And the Americans," continued the King, "are very wonderful. It is an inspiration and an earnest of victory simply to look at them. Their great height, their per- fect physical fitness, their fresh young faces, and their boundless enthusiasm are very stimulating to us who have had to endure four years of the brunt and the horror of war. What the Americans have really done for us is, perhaps, best expressed in their own idiom. They have 'put pep into us.' They have given to us and to the French of their pep and we know now that we cannot lose this war." — New York Times, Aug. tlO, 1918. PERMISSION, PERMISSIONNALRE It has become an unwritten law that when her poilu comes from the front on permission, the marraine has 144 NEW WORDS SELF-DEFINED the privilege of either receiving him or refusing to see him. . . . Regarding those same permissionnaires who, since the spring of 1915, have been familiar sights on the streets of Paris, the trench journals have much to say — those slouching, weary, shop-window gazing, muddy, bearded men with their musettes slung over their shoulders, with, apparently, nowhere to go, and not much desire to go anywhere except to sleep. — Gelett Burgess, Century, Sept., 1916. As I had just returned from "permission" to Aix-les- Bains, I had sufficient reserve strength to read the whole of your letter at one sitting . . . The day starts at 8 a. m. usually, when we " permissionnaires " re- luctantly but firmly separate ourselves from our downy couches. — Letter from G. T. Jenkins, A. E. F., Evening Sun, Baltimore, Nov. 13, 1918. PERSUADER A persuader is Tommy's nickname for a club carried by the bombers. It is about two feet long, thin at one end and very thick at the other. The thick end is studded with sharp steel spikes, while through the centre of the club there is a nine-inch lead bar to give it weight and balance. — Arthur Guy Empey, Over the Top (1917). PETROGRAD September 1, 1914. Name of St. Petersburg changed to Petrograd; other cities with German names would have them Russianized. — New York Times Current History, Jan. 23, 1915. NEW WORDS SELF-DEFINED 145 PILL BOX T. Atkins was the first to call them "pill boxes." The name has stuck. "Pillboxing" well describes the new system of fighting the Germans have been forced to adopt on the Western front, because of the terrific artillery pounding they are receiving at the hands of the British. The "pill box" system is one which artillery instruc- tors in the United States may well study, because it is one the American troops undoubtedly will encounter when they reach the actual fighting front. The "pill boxes" are hardly visible above the ground and usually are located in cellars of wrecked homes on reinforced shell craters. They are constructed at night. Wooden frames are carried forward and set up. In the darkness soldiers bring forward pails of cement and fill the frames. When possible, iron bars are used to reinforce the concrete. The cement dries and hardens quickly, and when fin- ished presents a solid yard of reinforced concrete in all directions. In these shelters machine-gun crews and quotas of 40 front-line reserves are safe from any shelling except a direct hit from a 10-inch high-explosive shell. — Floyd Gibbons, New York Tribune , Sept. 9, 1917. PINARD Thus, for instance, pinard, wine, was all but unknown in Paris before the war, yet it is now perhaps the most 146 NEW WORDS SELF-DEFINED famous word in the whole soldier vocabulary. Pas de pinard, pas de poilu. The origin of the word is not far to seek. The second syllable is an orthodox ending, and pinaud is the name of a well-known small Bur- gundy grape. — London Times, review of Dauzat's Argot de la Guerre, (1918). PIOU-PIOU Whatever be the historical derivation of "poilu," it is certain that the average Frenchman uses the term in its literal sense to indicate one whose beard is unshaven and whose hair is unshorn — in other words, a man who has been long enough at the front to become acclimated. The word did not come into general use until some months after the war began. The slang term for a private of the line at the outset of the conflict was "piou-piou." — Arthur H. Warner, New York Times, Oct. 7, 1917. It is midnight, Mademoiselle and good friend, and in order to write to you I have just removed my white gloves. (This is not a bid for admiration. The act has nothing of the heroic about it; my last coloured pair adorn the hands of a poor foot-soldier — piou-piou — who was cold). — Maurice Barres, The Undying Spirit of France (1917). PIQUE See chandellc. NEW WORDS SELF-DEFINED 147 PLUGSTREET London, September 5. — The famous Ploegsteert village, in Flanders, two miles north of Armentieres, has been taken by the British, Field Marshal Haig reported to-day. Ploegsteert village and wood have been the scene of some of the bitterest fighting of the entire war. Thou- sands died in battles around Ploegsteert during the late 1914 and the 1915 campaigns, and there was stubborn struggling there last year. Ploegsteert is known to British soldiers everywhere as "Plugstreet." — Dis- patch, Sept. 5, 1918. POILU Poilu is a word that only half pleases. It pleases be- cause it designates those whom all France loves and admires, but it seems not to respect them enough; it has a touch of the animal. Besides, the word was not born of this war. It has long been in use in and around French barracks. It was one of those thousands of words that live a precarious life in the margins of dic- tionaries. Littre writes: "Poileux, an old term of contempt." It was Balzac* (the discovery is not mine) who, in 1832, in "The Country Doctor," rehabilitated these two syllables, and for the first time seems to have given them the generous, vigorous, and cordial sense that we see in them to-day. He used the word once, •Balzac uses the word not only in Le MSdecin de campagne (1833) but also in Le Pin Goriot (18341 148 NEW WORDS SELF-DEFINED then let it drop and thought of it no more. — Maurice Barres, New York Times Current History, Sept., 1916. Selon Balzac, done, poilu * signifie la quintessence de la hardiesse, de l'energie, de la resolution. Un journal du front, le Poilu sans poil, donne une definition pleine et savoureuse des iniberbes poilus qui combattent pour le beau pays de France. — A. Marinoni, Modern Lan- guage Notes, Baltimore, Md., June, 1917. POLYPHONIC PROSE It will be seen, therefore, that "polyphonic prose" is, in a sense, an orchestral form. Its tone is not merely single and melodic as is that of vers libre, for instance, but contrapuntal and various. — Miss Amy Lowell, Introduction to Can Grande's Castle (1918). The volume [Can Grande's Castle] is composed of four long semi-declamatory, semi-narrative poems, all of them in "polyphonic prose." . . . Now, with its many changes of rhythm and subtleties of rhyme, it is practically a new form; dignified, orchestral, flexible. It is a form of almost infinite possibilities; it can run the gamut of tempi and dynamics on one page; it can com- bine the thunder of great oratory with the roll of blank verse and the low flutes of a lyric. If Miss Lowell has done nothing else, she has enriched English as well as American literature with a new and variable medium of expression. — Louis Untermeter, The New Era in American Poetry (1919). •See piou-piou. NEW WORDS SELF-DEFINED 149 POMELO Grapefruit is a popular name for the edible fruit of Citrus decnmana, now widely used in the dietary of American households. Although the designation "pomelo" has been adopted in scientific circles in this country, and the fruit is termed "pomelow" by the English of Ceylon and India, the now familiar expression grapefruit, se- lected in recognition of the fact that the fruit commonly occurs on the trees in large clusters somewhat resem- bling those of grapes, is likely to be retained. The name "shaddock," which was likewise employed by some a few decades ago, is all but abandoned now. — Journal of the American Medical Association, Chicago, Quoted in Literary Digest, Aug. 10, 1918. POSTE DE SECOURS I suppose you know what these posts are: they are simply well constructed and equipped "dugouts," which are situated right up next to the front. The wounded are brought in from the trenches to these places by the "brancardiers" [stretcher-bearers], and we take them from there to hospitals farther back. Some of the "postes" are remarkably well fixed up in- side, with electric lights, kitchens, dining-rooms, and bed-rooms for the "blesses" [wounded]. — R. Ran- dolph Ball, letter University of Virginia Alwnni News, Nov., 1918. 150 NEW WORDS SELF-DEFINED PRE-DREADNOUGHT Pre-dreadnought battleships differ from dreadnought battleships in that, instead of carrying all big guns and torpedo defence guns, they carry some big guns and some smaller or intermediate battery guns, thus taper- ing down to the torpedo defence guns. . . . Both pre-dreadnought battleships and armoured cruisers are discredited as shown by the fact that no more are being built. — Commander C. C. Gill, Naval Power in the War (1914-1918).! PREPAREDNESS When the convention of 1916 was drawing near I asked him [Colonel Roosevelt] if he thought he had a chance of the nomination. "Not the least in the world," he said. "If I had, I killed it by my tour of the West advocating preparedness and Americanism." — Charles Willis Thompson, New York Times, Jan. 7, 1919. President Wilson, in his message to Congress at the opening of the session in December, and in many speeches since then, is on record as believing that "pre- paredness" is the paramount issue. — American Review of Reviews, May, 1916. Perhaps when you learned, as I dare say you did learn beforehand, that I was expecting to address you on the subject of preparedness, you recalled the address which I made to Congress something more than a year ago, in which I said that this question of military pre- NEW WORDS SELF-DEFINED 151 paredness was not a pressing question. But more than a year has gone by since then and I would be ashamed if I had not learned something in fourteen months. The minute I stop changing my mind with the change of all the circumstances of the world, I will be a back number. — President Wilson, New York, Jan. 27, 1916. Preparedness is the theme of the hour. The news- papers and magazines discuss little else. We have preparedness processions and preparedness conven- tions; preparedness drills and preparedness camps. Most of us accept military preparedness as an unfor- tunate necessity in this stage of the world's develop- ment. No true citizen would neglect any measure for the security of the nation. I shall, therefore, not argue for military preparedness. But the application of the preparedness idea does not cease there. — Dr. Charles W. Dabney, Baccalaureate address, Univer- sity of Cincinnati, June 4, 1916. PROFITEER A new type of profiteer has been introduced by war- conditions, and we owe his discovery to Food-Admin- istrator Hoover, according to Washington press dis- patches, in which Mr. Hoover points out that while wholesale prices are lower, retail prices are going up instead of down. The New York Wall Street Journal rejoices in the curbing of wholesale profiteering, which is "no more unpatriotic and dangerous and not nearly 152 NEW WORDS SELF-DEFINED so mean as profiteering by retail." — Literary Digest, Nov. 3, 1917. PRUNEAU See copain. PUP TENT The pup tent, as most know, is the little dog-kennel- like tent formed by buttoning together the two shelter halves, carried by two soldiers. It is so small that one has to go down on hands and knees to crawl into it, but it makes comfortable quarters for two when they are once inside. When one crawls into a little pup tent at six o'clock night after night, because no lights are allowed and it is dangerous to be prowling about in the dark on the edges of slippery shell holes, and remains there through the long hours of the night with a soldier by one's side, one gets very near to the heart of that boy. — A. C. Wyckoff, Biblical Review, N. Y., April, 1919. PUSSY FOOT The Colonel was consumed with a desire to force "pre- paredness and Americanism" on the Republican Party which till then had been "pussy-footed," to use the Colonel's own word. Its National Convention was approaching. It was evidently in imminent danger of taking a "pussy-footed" position on the war, which would have damned it forever. The Colonel knew that that would be the effect of any such attitude, but the Republican leaders did not, and were blind to the thun- derstorm ahead. — New York Times, Jan. 7, 1919. Q "Q" BOAT* Among the anti-submarine measures initiated and encouraged by Mr. Churchill and Lord Fisher were the "Q" boats, the mystery attaching to which has now been dispelled by Sir Eric Geddes. . . . The "Q" boat may be briefly defined as a decoy. The stratagem or artifice is as old as sea warfare. . . . Many yarns have been spun about the achievements of the "Q" boat commanders, and, as must be generally known, several V. C.'s and other decorations have been awarded for gallant deeds performed in this branch of the Service. Some of the stories told of their doings may be apocryphal, but the Admiralty can soon remedy this by putting out authentic reports, and these dra- matic and exciting episodes of sea warfare will lend them- selves better than more prosaic work of the Fleet to the deft handling of practiced litterateurs like Mr. Kipling and Sir Henry Newbolt. The novel and stirring in- cidents of "Q" boat warfare which the Admiralty rec- ords contain will assuredly be as full of thrills as the Tales of The Trade. — Army and Navy Gazette, August 10, 1918. ♦See htuh-hiuh tkip. 153 154 NEW WORDS SELF-DEFINED The use of the so-called "Q" ships or mystery ships comprises an interesting phase of anti-submarine war- fare. The service of these requires both courage and skill. A mystery ship may be defined as a naval sub- marine destroyer disguised as a merchantman. The usual type is a merchant ship, mounting carefully con- cealed guns and manned by a trained naval crew dressed in civilian clothes. The object is to decoy the enemy submarine into easy range and then suddenly unmask the guns and destroy her by rapid and accurate gun- fire before she has a chance to submerge. — Commander C. C. Gill, Naval Power in the War (1914-1918). R RADADOU Sometimes they [Nenette and Rintintin] have an off- spring who is called either Radadou or simply Gus. You aren't supposed to have a Radadou or a Gus with your Nenette and Rintintin until you have been in Paris for some time, and have safely lived through many raids. — Roy S. Durstine, Scribner's Monthly, Nov., 1918, p. 559. RADIO SPEECH Wireless telephony was a fact before we entered the war — and a thoroughly American development. Radio speech was transmitted between United States Navy vessels at sea in 1915 and across the Atlantic to the Eiffel Tower in Paris, and over the Pacific to the Ha- waiian Islands in the same year. — James H. Collins, Oscillator, Cambridge, Mass., Feb. 22, 1919. RAFALE See chandelle. RAFFLES* A "Raffles" pulled off a new stunt last night at the home of Dr. H. H. Flood. Entering the front door, he •See The Amateur Cracksman (1899) and Mr. Justice Raffles (1909) by E. W. Hor- nung. 155 156 NEW WORDS SELF-DEFINED took a half dozen electric bulbs from their sockets and then proceeded to ransack a bookcase. . . . The police of Catonsville were notified and hurried to the house, but no trace of the robber could be found. — Baltimore Sun, Jan. 14, 1919. RAGPICKER If "The Ragpickers" becomes the accepted slang for the newly found Field Salvage Corps of the United States Army, there may be trouble ahead, for the spruce young officers now going abroad to command the newest field auxiliary of the fighting men don't fancy the name. "Naturally, it is the business of the Hun to try to make each ragpicker's life so miserable that he will want to retire," says the San Antonio Light, and proceeds to give this general view of the Field Salvage Corps' business: A battlefield after a fierce engagement is a veritable treasure-trove. To be sure the eye of a novice would fail to distinguish it as such ; but the more discriminating eye of an Allied ragpicker would. Therefore, the ap- parent wastage of war is clearly manifest. The wounded are removed before the ragpickers begin work. — Literary Digest, Sept. 14, 1918. RED TRIANGLE The Red Triangle of the Y. M. C. A. is now a familiar symbol in all parts of the world. The announcement has been made recently that the Y. W. C. A. has adopted NEW WORDS SELF-DEFINED 157 as its symbol the Blue Triangle, with the generous ap- proval of the British Y. W. C. A. and the International Committee of the Y. M. C. A. This insignia is already familiar to the French people, where it has been used ever since the American Y. W. C. A. began its war work in France. It has long symbolized the British Y. W. C. A. Thus the work that the Christian women of our land are doing in this great war will be officially recognized through the symbol of the Blue Triangle and the horizon-blue uniform worn by the Y. W. C. A. workers. — Christian Observer, Louisville, Ky., Aug. 14, 1918. General Allenby said he felt "that one of the biggest and best things that will come out of the war is a sympa- thetic understanding between the American and British peoples, an understanding that will go a long way to- ward guaranteeing the peace of the world in the future." We talked until midnight on my last night with him, and I was much impressed by the tributes he paid to the work of the Red Triangle with his troops. From the day the British Army poured across the Suez Canal and commenced its march across the Sinai peninsula, it has never been deserted by the Young Men's Christian Association. W T hen, after long months, the Palestine push began, the Red Triangle men were stationed at every casualty station in the front-line area. When the wounded troops began to stream back they found waiting for them such simple comforts as cigarettes, chocolate, sandwiches, matches, and daily papers, and these were 158 NEW WORDS SELF-DEFINED again and again distributed t<> them during their weary- ing, painful journey hack to the base hospitals, 150 miles away. — Charles W. Wiiitehair, Baltimore Evening Sun, Oct. 18, 1918. REVANCHE Tt is sometimes said that among the causes of the war was an alleged French desire for "revenge." The fact is that In rt ranche, as used in the recent past, contains no idea of vindictiveness. "It means, in fact, nothing more than 'the return game,' as when whist-players who have just won a rubber ask their opponents if they would like 'revenge'." (Quoted from Translation from French by Graeme Ritchie and J. M. Moore). — Athen- aeum, London, Oct., 1918. See 'penguin. See Eatables. ROLLER ROODIBOYS ROSALIE The derivation of this may interest your readers. The bayonet was first made at Bayonne, of which town St. Rosalie is the patron saint. The French soldier poet, Theodore Botrel, has sung the charms of Rosa- lie. — Lieut. A. Beresford-Horslet, Saturday Review, London, Sept. 9, 1916. Remarkable, however, among the new words is Rosalie, the bayonet. It is by far the most common term for NEW WORDS SELF-DEFINED 159 that weapon in use among the soldiers, and yet, accord- ing to Mr. Dauzat, it is definitely known to have been originated by one who, in the view of the French soldier, is reckoned among the bourreurs du crane. Since any one who writes from the rear about or for the front be- longs, in the sensitive judgment of the soldier, to that category, it implies no great disrespect to Mr. Theodore Botrel to declare that the success of his invention — Rosalie was launched in a song of his which appeared in the Bulletin des Armies in the autumn of 1914 — is little short of miraculous. It is the only creation of the civilian which has gained currency among the troops. — Ixmdon Times, review of Dauzat's L' Argot de la Guerre (1918). SAB-CAT The principal emblems of the I. W. W. are a black cat and a wooden shoe. With these the organization speckles its literature. The cat is known to the breth- ren as a "sab-cat." Nobody knows why the cat. "Sab," of course, is an abbreviation of sabotage, which word designates the chief means whereby the I. W. W- hope to gain their ends. And sabotage comes from the French word sabot, a shoe. Hence the wooden shoe. — Literary Digest, April 19, 1919. A sab-cat and wobbly band, A rebel song or two; And then we'll show the parasites Just what the cat can do. First stanza of The Kitten in the Wheat, a favourite I. W. W. song. SALLY BOOZE See eatables. SAMMY Mr. Punch, ever reluctant to take credit to himself, feels nevertheless bound to say that the suggestion of 160 NEW WORDS SELF-DEFINED 161 the name "Sammies" for our American Allies appeared in his columns as long ago as June 13th. On page 384 of that issue (after quoting The Daily Neivs as having said, "We shall want a name for the American 'Tom- mies' when they come; but do not call them 'Yankees'; they none of them like it") he wrote: "As a term of distinction and endearment, Mr. Punch suggests 'Sam- mies'* after their uncle." — Punch, London, Aug. 1, 1917. The question became sufficiently acute last month to receive the official cognizance of the chief of staff at Washington. "If there is one thing that the American soldier dislikes in France," said General March to the newspaper men, "it is to be called a 'Sammy.' No- body seems to know just how the term started, but on seeing the strong, virile men from here over there, the British rejected it at once, and they call the American troops 'Yanks'." Of course it should have been Yanks from the very beginning. Yanks from South Norwalk, Conn.; Yanks from Birmingham, Ala.; Yanks from Milwaukee, Wis. "Yanks" has the sound and the fitness of things, and "Sammies" is an incubated monstrosity. But it is precisely at the beginning of our experiences over there that this artificial, lisping cognomen was out of place. After the Ourcq and the Somme it no longer matters. The men who broke the Prussian Guard could very well afford to be called Sammies, or Percys, or Goldielocks, or anything similarly and exquisitely tender in the The suggested derivation from nos a mil does not deserve consideration. 162 NEW WORDS SELF-DEFINED style of Florence Barclay. — Collier's, Sept. 7, 1918, p. 16. SAUSAGE Not long ago Norman Prince became obsessed with the idea of bringing down a German "sausage," as obser- vation balloons are called. — James R. McConnell, Flying for France (1916). SCHAUFFOR The word "chauffeur" was eliminated, and there were many discussions as to what should be substituted. Many declared for Kraftwagenfiihrer or "power- wagon-driver." But finally the word was Germanized as "Schauffor." — James W. Gerard, My Four Years in Germany (1917). SCHRECKLICHKEIT It is such atrocities as these which are meant by the two war expressions, "unrestricted U-boat warfare" and "f rightfulness" (Schrecklichkeit), which the Ger- mans have added to the dictionary of human experi- ence. — Stories of Americans in the World War (1918), p. 25. SCRAP OF PAPER Treaties are scraps of paper. All depends'upon the manner of turning them to account. — Bismarck. See James Brown Scott's A Survey of International Rela- tions Between the United States and Germany (1917), XLVII. NEW WORDS SELF-DEFINED 163 August 4, 1914, the British ambassador in Berlin, Sir Edward Goschen, justified the entrance of England into the war chiefly on the ground that Germany had vio- lated the neutrality of Belgium, which Great Britain was pledged by treaty to defend. In a dispatch to the British Government he reported a conversation with the German Chancellor, Bethmann Hollweg, who said that "the step taken by His Majesty's Government was terrible to a degree; just for a word — 'neutrality/ a word which in war time had so often been disregarded — just for a scrap of paper Great Britain was going to make war on a kindred nation who desired nothing better than to be friends with her." — War Cyclopedia, Government Printing Office, Washington, 1918. The Peace Conferences at The Hague have sought to diminish the evil by universal agreement upon rules of action. The rules and the treaties have become "scraps of paper." The progress of democracy, how- ever, is dealing with the problem by destroying the type of Government which has shown itself incap- able of maintaining respect for law and justice. — Elihu Root, The Effect of Democracy on International Law (1917). SEA-TANK The application of the "tank" idea to marine warfare seems to have been successfully carried out by the Italians in their recent raid at Pola, where they de- stroyed by this means a large Austrian warship. Just what these "sea-tanks" are is not yet known in detail 164 NEW WORDS SELF-DEFINED but enough is understood and inferred to furnish ma- terial for a descriptive article of considerable length contributed by H. Winfield Secor to The Electrical Experimenter (New York, September). The sea-tanks, Mr. Secor tells us, measure about 40 feet by 6, and are propelled by electricity. They are provided with an endless rotary chain, running lengthwise around the vessel, and fitted with sharp steel barbs or knives which can cut their way through nets and other ob- stacles just like their prototypes, the land-tanks, first used so effectively by the British. — Literary Digest, Sept. 14, 1918. SECTOR A sector is that portion of the front lines occupied by a battalion. The battalions are the units. — General Malleterre, Harper's Magazine, Oct., 1917. SELF-DETERMINATION National aspirations must be respected; peoples may now be dominated and governed only by their own consent. "Self-determination" is not a mere phrase. It is an imperative principle of action which statesmen will henceforth ignore at their peril. We cannot have general peace for the asking, or by the mere arrange- ments of a peace conference. It cannot be pieced together out of individual understandings between powerful states. All the parties to this war must join in the settlement of every issue anywhere involved in NEW WORDS SELF-DEFINED 165 it; because what we are seeking is a peace that we can all unite to guarantee and maintain and every item of it must be submitted to the common judgment whether it be right and fair, an act of justice, rather than a bar- gain between sovereigns. — President Wilson, Joint Session of Congress, Feb. 11, 1918. SERBIA Serbia has taken advantage of its unusual publicity to spread the spelling with a "b" instead of the former Servia. This change, like that of Petrograd, has met with surprisingly general acceptance. — Harvey J. Swann, French Terminologies in the Making (1918), p. 208. SHADDOCK See pomelo. SHELL SHOCK It was immediately thought that these conditions were the result of violent concussions occurring in the vicin- ity, and the striking but misleading term of "shell shock" came into being. The name was applied to all queer nervous and mental symptoms, and these patients suddenly acquired considerable notoriety. . . . The nervous symptoms included under the misleading and forbidden term, "shell shock," are now called war neuroses, or simply nervousness. They are known to be similar to peace-time neuroses, and they are peace- time neuroses with a war-time colouring. — Frederick W. Parsons, Atlantic Monthly, March, 1919. 166 NEW WORDS SELF-DEFINED SHIP-MINDED We must make America ship-minded. We are so little ship-minded to-day that it is chiefly the diffi- culties of operation which occupy the thoughts of those who are giving any thought whatever to our merchant marine of to-morrow. — Edward N. Hurley, National Geographic Magazine, Sept., 1918. SHIP ONE'S STRIPE Now, in peace-time, in order to "ship one's stripe" it is only necessary to pass an oral examination in navi- gation, and an oral and written examination in sea- manship. After the exams, we had become Super-Snotties, and as such not required to do any of an ordinary Mid- shipman's duties, but the Commander would not put us on to watch-keeping until we had actually "shipped our stripes," so we had, in the graceful lingo of the gun- room, absolutely "stink all" to do for nearly three weeks, and could go ashore every day if we pleased. — From Snotty to Sub, by "Heandi," London (1918). SHOCK CAR The Americans cooperated in the attack on Juvigny with the type of tanks which the French have named "Chars d'Assaut," or shock cars. These engines of war have been called "armoured infantry." They have NEW WORDS SELF-DEFINED 167 all the suppleness of troops afoot and they advance readily into the enemy's positions, dealing death with gruesome profusion from their quick-firers and cannon. One of these cars, manned by a French lieutenant, killed 200 Germans before Juvigny. — Associated Press, Sept. 2, 1918. SHOCK TROOP In the third place, "shock" troops composed of selected men from all divisions of the army were to advance after the bombardment, in a series of "waves." When the first wave had reached the limit of its strength and endurance, it was to be followed up by a second mass of fresh troops, and this by a third, and so on until the Allies' defense was completely broken. — A School His- tory of the Great War (1918) by McKinley, Coulomb, and Gerson, p. 142. SHOFAR Camp Meade, Md., Sept. 7. — For the first time in the history of the country, so far as known, the Shofar, or ram's horn, will be blown in a United States Army camp at 8 o'clock to-night. That Shofar will.be blown in the Jewish Welfare Building here at Meade. It will be the call issued to the Jewish soldiers in this cantonment to take part in the religious exercises attendant upon the feast of the New Year. At the same time it will be, in accordance with the symbolism of the Shofar, a call to sacrifice and consecration of one's self to the highest ideals, 168 NEW WORDS SELF-DEFINED including the consecration of one's life, if necessary, to the cause of patriotism and the cause of America. — Baltimore Evening Sun, Sept. 7, 1918. SHOW PIGEON The British officers marvelled at this finickiness, and at times thought it was show pigeon — done especially for the benefit of visitors. — Samuel G. Blythe, Saturday Evening Post, Nov. 2, 1918. SHUTTERS "How can the airman who has no wireless receive signals from the ground?" The "shutters," strips of coloured canvas, are arranged in different formations by a trained Signal Corps squad, and the air pilot flying overhead can read them from a height of two or three miles.— World's Work, Nov., 1918. SIMS'S CIRCUS From the train window approaching the base I ob- tained my first view of "Sims's circus," as the [Amer- ican] flotilla has been named by the irreverent ensign. — Herman Whitaker, Independent, June 1, 1918. SINN FEIN Some of the more radical among the Irish Home Rule party had formed an organization known as the Sinn Fein (shin fan), an Irish phrase which means "for NEW WORDS SELF-DEFINED 169 ourselves." Their aim was to make Ireland an inde- pendent nation. The leaders of this group got into correspondence with persons in Germany and were promised military assistance if they would rebel against England. The rebellion broke out April 24, 1916, without the promised help from Germany. For several days the rebels held some of the principal build- ings in Dublin. After much bloodshed the rebellion was put down, and Sir Roger Casement, one of those who had been in communication with Germany, was executed for treason. — A School History of the Great War (1918), by McKinley, Coulomb, and Gerson, p. 142-143. SINKER The humble doughnut, alias the cruller, alias the fried cake, alias the "sinker," finally has won a niche among the illustrious in the Hall of Fame. The exact date of the birth of the doughnut is shrouded in mystery, but it surely goes a long way back. Because of the hitherto modest sphere it occupied historians have given it but scant attention, but now that it has gained a rank among the really famous, its ancestry is sure to be the subject of inquiry and it may be ascertained that the progenitors of the modern "sinker" date back to the building of the pyramids or thereabout. — Private John Allen, Leslie's Weekly, Oct. 19, 1918. ' SKIPPER See First Luff. 170 NEW WORDS SELF-DEFINED SKIP-STOP The skip-stop plan for surface cars, suggested by the Federal Fuel Administration, will not be considered by the Public Service Commission until it receives a report from the Union Railway Company, which has had the, plan in operation for about two weeks on several lines in the Bronx. Public Service Commissioner Whitney said yesterday that the commission had received.no complaints, and he therefore assumed the plan of stopping cars only once in two blocks was practicable. — New York Times, Sept. 17, 1918. SKYOGRAPHER "Skyographers'* have also gone over. They are men whose work is to decipher or interpret photographs taken from aeroplanes. A picture taken from a swiftly moving airplane up in the air several hundred or several thousand feet is quite different from one taken with a ,'itationary camera within ten feet of a stationary object. What seems to the untrained eye only a white speck or lines that cross one another is recognized by the skyographer as a big cannon or airdrome. — Stories of Americans in the World War (1918), p. 52. SLACKER Of all the new words that the war has given us " slacker " is one of the surest to survive. Of course, the word NEW WORDS SELF-DEFINED 171 wasn't new in England, but it had no general currency in America before we heard it applied to those who held back from recruiting. The Continent (Chicago) seizes upon it as a useful whip in the modern religious world. Jesus knew the slackers, says the writer, and he enjoined upon them to "let your loins be girded about, and your lamps burning, and be ye yourselves like unto men look- ing for their Lord." — Literary Digest, April 8, 1916. SLANT An outstanding religious leader has constructed another book, Old Truths and New Facts, to deal with Prayer, the Bible, the Church, Missions, and Jesus Christ from the slant of war language. — Dial, N. Y., Nov. 2, 1918. SLUM With the American Army in France, September 3 (By Mail). — "It's been mostly slum for the last couple of weeks," was the way the Salvation Army sisters, Miss Gladys and Irene Mclntyre, of Mount Vernon, N. Y., replied to the question as to whether they had good food at the front. "Slum" is army stew. The sisters could have had special food, a fact they neglected to tell. But they refused it when the soldiers were denied fresh food. "Slum" was good enough, they said. — Baltimore Star, Oct. 7, 1918. SMILEAGE Although the Government built the Liberty theatres, no money was provided to operate the circuit. To 172 NEW WORDS SELF-DEFINED raise funds to enable the theatres to start operations and to finance companies for the camp circuit, "smile- age" books containing coupons exchangeable for tickets were placed on sale to the public. Smileage sale corres- ponds exactly to the advance sale of theatre tickets — good until used. — Report of The Chairman on Training Camp Activities to the Secretary of War (1918). SMOKE SCREEN Under favourable conditions of wind and position many vessels have saved themselves from torpedo attack by the production of a smoke screen. This may be formed either by incomplete combustion of the oil used for fuel by most naval vessels, or it may be created by burning chemicals, such as phosphorus and coal tar, or mixtures in which both of these and other materials are used. — The Enemy Submarine, by the U. S. Naval Consulting Board, May 1, 1918. SNOTTY Now the derivation of this inelegant term happened in this wise. A "snot rag," as every schoolboy knows, is the slang term for a pocket handkerchief, and the term "snotty," as applied to midshipmen, came in at the time when their Lords Commissioners of the Admiralty ordained that the young gentlemen should wear three buttons on the sleeves of their full dress round jackets. The buttons, according to certain ribald persons who wished to cast ridicule upon the midshipmen, were placed there to prevent their wearers from putting NEW WORDS SELF-DEFINED 173 the sleeves of their garments to the use generally dele- gated to pocket handkerchiefs. It was nothing but a libel, of course, but the nickname still survives, and will survive to the crack o'doom. — "Taffrail," Carry On! (1916). A word of explanation as to the title of the book may be desired by readers unacquainted with naval slang. "Snotty" is a dreadful word of, I am sure, libellous origin! But it is pure navalese. "Middy" is not a Service term at all, and the curly-haired "Middy" so dear to writers of fiction and comic opera has no ex- istence in fact — he is a regular "Mrs. Harris!" — From Snotty to Sub, by "Heandi," London, 1918, IX. SOMEWHERE IN FRANCE The war has enriched our language with many new ex- pressions, but none more beautiful than that of " Some- where in France." To all noble minds, while it sounds the abysmal depths of tragic suffering, it rises to the sublimest heights of heroic self-sacrifice. — James M. Beck, Defenders of Democracy (1917). "Somewhere in France" — we know not where — he lies, Mid shuddering earth and under anguished skies! We may not visit him, but this we say: Though our steps err his shall not miss their way. From the exhaustion of War's fierce embrace He, nothing doubting, went to his own place. 174 NEW WORDS SELF-DEFINED To him has come, if not the crown and palm, The kiss of Peace — a vast, sufficing calm! — John Hog- ben, Spectator, London, Sept. 25, 1915. SOVIET A soviet is a new chapter in government, the distinctive contribution of the Russian revolution to political organization. It is the local government body of the Russian revolu- tion, a sort of city council or township board. The central supreme governing body is the All-Russian Congress of Soviets, and the cabinet there chosen. Since the soviet is the local organization of the peasants', workmen's and soldiers' deputies, only these classes vote for delegates. That's the distinguishing feature of the Soviets — they represent working-class rule. The aristocrats and middle class have no vote. In any district, for example, the workmen of each shop and trade elect a delegate, or as many delegates as their numbers entitle them to, to the local soviet. So with the soldiers and so with the peasants in the section sur- rounding the city. But the shop owners, the merchants, the bankers, the lawyers, the land owners have no vote and no repre- sentatives. They have been disfranchised. — Btjbton Knisely, Baltimore Sun, Sept. 2, 1918. NEW WORDS SELF-DEFINED 175 Several subscribers ask us for "a simple definition of soviet and Bolsheviki." How can one give a simple definition of anything so complex and indefinite as Russian politics? But we will do the best we can to oblige. A soviet is the executive committee of a labour union. The Bolsheviki are the people who are running the Russian Soviets. The former is a kind of political machinery derived from industrial organizations. The latter is the particular party now in control of the ma- chinery in Russia. It is the same difference as exists in our own country between governmental institutions and political parties. The soviet is designed to sweep aside as unnecessary all such things as kings, presidents, parliaments, legisla- tures, courts, cabinets, capitalists, landlords, employees, armies, nations, classes, and boundary lines. We may call this as absurd, as impossible, or as wicked as we please, but since it is just now the only government of a hundred million Russians and fifty million Ger- mans we are obliged to try to understand it. — Hamilton Holt, Independent, Dec. 14, 1918. SPAD Till recently the French pinned their faith on an im- proved and speedier type of the well-known Nieuport, a monoplane upon which many records were made in the early days. Still faster is the "Spad," a tiny bi- plane. — Bertram W. Williams, Scientific American^ Oct. 6, 1917. 176 NEW WORDS SELF-DEFINED SPARTACANS, SPARTACIDES,* SPARTACITES, SPARTACUS GROUP, SPARTACUS LEUTE A mysterious group of German Bolsheviki have re- cently made their appearance in the cable dispatches from Germany, which must have somewhat puzzled the American reader. This is the Spartacus group, or Spartacides, and they are, we are told, a party of ex- treme Socialists, led by Dr. Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg, who wish to see a proletarian autocracy replace the old military autocracy in the Fatherland. — Literary Digest, Dec. 28, 1918. Why Spartacides, Spartacans, or whatever they are to be called? Why, indeed, the human race should be afflicted with such members as those forming the Spar- tacus group — younger brothers of the raging Bolsheviki — is a question for wise men to ponder over. But the question why the followers of the late Dr. Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg should of all desig- nations have chosen that of Spartacus Leute, or Spar- tacus people, is easier to answer. It appears that some years ago, needing a pseudonym for his political writings, Dr. Liebknecht looked about him for something classic, and, bethinking himself of the rebellious gladiator who gave the Romans so much trouble, thenceforth signed himself "Dr. Spartacus." *In spite of adverse criticism the word is properly formed. The cide of Spartacide is not the cide of insecticide. The initial c in the former is furnished by Spartac {us), the real suffix being ide. But in insecticide the suffix is cide, meaning destructive of. The word Seleucidee from Seleucus is formed exactly as Spartacides from Spartacus. NEW WORDS SELF-DEFINED 177 When the Kaiser's downfall gave him his chance to project himself into the limelight, he found that his own name lent itself ill to forming the name of a party, whereas "Spartacus" might do well enough. Liter- ally, "Liebknecht" means "dear knave." One can easily see that a band of hotheads stuffed with half- baked ideas of "freedom" would not care to be called knaves of any kind. — Munsey , s f March, 1919. In Germany the Independent Social Democrats and the Spartacites correspond to the Bolsheviki of Russia and they have exercised their power through the same machinery, the Council of Workmen and Soldiers, known in Russia as Soviet and in Germany as the Arbeiter Soldatenrat. — Independent, N. Y., June 4, 1919. THE SPLASH See spotting-board. SPLIT TRAILER Central France, Sept. 5 (Correspondence of The Associated Press). — American ingenuity is fast making itself felt in the construction of field guns in the vast workhouse of the ordnance branch of the American Army here. One of the American designs which has won strong favour with the French experts is the "split trailer," which extends back of the gun from the wheels down to the ground. From the earliest days of gunnery this trailer has been a single piece. But the Americans have 178 NEW WORDS SELF-DEFINED split it from the ground up, so that two great legs spread out backward from a cannon. The results have been astonishing, permitting an ordinary field piece to be elevated to 80 degrees or almost straight up. The American design has now been adopted as the standard French model, and it is going into all the new guns made at French arsenals. — New York Times, Sept. 22, 1918. SPOTTER* They will not all be " spotters" (the men who telephone the ranges to the gun crews), but their vision will be surer for this schooling, and besides, it is wise to train them so that they can exchange stations in a crisis of an engagement. — Ralph D. Paine, The Fighting Fleets (1918), p. 388. SPOTTING-BOARD Here the "spotting-board" comes into play, a device so entertaining that the pupils flock around it out of school hours. It is a long table upon which the ranges are marked by lines running both ways, at intervals repre- senting a hundred yards. At one end is a square of tin, set on edge, with a narrow slit cut in it, and a shut- ter which can be dropped across it. Upon the board is a tiny model of a submarine as seen when awash, its size scaled to fit this miniature bit of ocean. A little dab of cotton glued to a wooden base •See dummy compost. NEW WORDS SELF-DEFINED 179 is called "the splash," and looks very much like the foam kicked up when a shell strikes the water. The Navy youth who is learning to "spot" takes his stand at the end of the board and looks through the slit in the square of tin. A comrade lifts the shutter and lets it drop, merely a glimpse of the surface and the dot of a submarine. The pupil estimates the distance and the deflection right or left, and calls out the shot. — Ralph D. Paine, The Fighting Fleets (1918), p. 387. SPURLOS VERSENKT* He was merely seeking an excuse for the inhuman con- duct he planned. The order "spurlos versenkt" — to be sunk without leaving a trace — was to be obeyed. — Stories of Americans in the World War (1918), p. 24. SQUEEKER How can Uncle Sam break the pigeons he buys for service in France of their instinct to return to the United States? He cannot. Once a homer is settled it is no good to our government except for breeding purposes. The only birds useful for courier purposes are those that are brought into service before they are old enough to settle. These are eight weeks old or less, and are called "squeekers." — Stories of Americans in the World War (1918), p. 76. *0n May 19, 1917, Luxburg, the German minister at Buenos Aires, sent a secret telegram to Berlin advising that Argentine steamers be "spared if possible or else sunk without leaving a trace." 180 NEW WORDS SELF-DEFINED STAGGER Restaurants close [in Washington] at nine-thirty in the evening, and there would be no special point in staying in them anyway. Public meetings are pro- hibited. " Stagger" hours have been instituted — where- by one department goes to its work a half hour earlier than another, thus relieving the congestion of the street cars.— Dial, N. Y., Nov. 2, 1918. STAGNUCK The publishers of the Modern Library who have given five different definitions of a "stagnuck," one of which is a person who thinks Balzac is the name of a mining stock, have asked the public for their definitions. They report that they have received about six hundred suggestions, the best of which, in their opinion, is that a "stagnuck" is a person who thinks that George Eliot was the father of ex -president Eliot of Harvard. A list of the hundred best suggestions will be printed in book- let form and distributed in the near future. — Bookman, Dec, 1918. STAR SHELL The American Navy has developed a shell which, when fired in the vicinity of any enemy fleet, will light it up, make it visible, and thus render it an easy target. This most recent naval development is in response to the demand for some means of searching out the enemy NEW WORDS SELF-DEFINED 181 at night. For many years the need of lighting the enemy for night battle has been supplied by high-power search-lights, but the ever-increasing range of naval artillery outstripped the development of the search- light and some more effective method was necessary. . . . The illuminating portion of the shell consists of a single light, or star, attached to a parachute. — Annual Report of Secretary of the Navy (1918). STATIC Science has apparently taken a giant stride if the inven- tion of Roy A. Weagant accomplishes all that is claimed for it. Mr. Weagant asserts that by his research and discoveries he has taken all the "static" out of wireless telegraphy. What the oldtime buzzing was in the early stages of the telephone the "static" is to the wireless, interfering with perfect communication at all times, and frequently preventing the sending of mes- sages altogether. Because of the presence in the air of an excess of uncontrolled electricity, the transmission of wireless messages has at times been impossible for considerable periods. — New Era Magazine, Jan., 1919. See ship one's stripe. STINK ALL STRAFE That conglomerate of many languages, English, as Logan P. Smith successfully shows it to be in his essay 182 NEW WORDS SELF-DEFINED on the subject in a recent publication of the Home University Library ("The English Language," Henry Holt & Co.) has captured at least one word from the enemy in the present war — "strafe." Writers from the front are using this German equivalent of "punish" in a way and with a freedom that suggests its incor- poration into the common speech with a secondary meaning that is not without its connotation of humour. —New York Times, Dec. 17, 1916. The captain decides to stay up. "Fritz might try a little strafe before daylight," he says. But no strafe comes. The morning dawns red and serene and the captain prepares to sleep by removing his gas mask from his shoulders, his boots, and his coat. — Stories of Americans in the World War (1918), p. 119. The German ports of the North Sea and the Belgian coast can know only that so many of their submarines departed with high hopes of strafing merchant vessels and never came back. — Ralph D. Paine, The Fighting Fleets (1918), p. 112. STRAINAGRAPH A new device to record the "give" of a ship, very similar to the seismograph that makes an accurate record of an earthquake shock, has been developed by F. R. Mc- Millan, research engineer of the Concrete Ship Section, and H. S. Loeffler, assistant research engineer of the section. When equipped with this device every strain that a ship experiences in a storm, or, for that matter, NEW WORDS SELF-DEFINED 183 in any weather, is recorded by little zigzag waves on a strip of paper which passes under a recording needle in the instrument. The apparatus was tried out on the concrete steamer Faith on her first voyage. The straina- graph is built somewhat on the principle of the seis- mograph. — Nautical Gazette, October 18, 1918. STRIKER* When we reached the captain's dugout we found him in the doorway, polishing his shoes. He was a big man from the Northwest, of Scandinavian blood, and pres- ently he spoke almost as if he were carrying on his lieutenant's democratic exposition: "I'm supposed to have a striker for this, of course; but, upon my word, there's something in me that won't let me order a soldier, over here to fight, to polish my shoes unless I can't possibly find time to do it myself." — Maude Radford Warren, Saturday Evening Post. Oct. 12, 1918. SUICIDE FLEET For a time the work of the American ships sent to assist the French off the shores of Brittany seemed to be rather obscured and overlooked. . . . They called it "The Suicide Fleet" when it sailed from home in the summer, a merry jest to indicate the odds laid against the vessels in nautical circles. — Ralph D. Paine, The Fighting Fleets (1918), p. 184. ?See dog robber. 184 NEW WORDS SELF-DEFINED SUPER- Only recently we have witnessed such a prevalence of the prefix super, which seems to have caught the fancy of the moment. For some time we have had not only super-men but also super-heated steam and have seen results super-induced. Now the New York Times, in a report of a cabinet meeting (Feb. 4, 1917), says: "The view was general that a super-crisis had been reached." Punch advertises a super-desk. We see on the screen announcements of super-de-\\ixe films, super-serials, and swper-pictures. An advertisement (March, 1917) reads: "Fashion's mandates are always followed — often anticipated, occasionally first conceived in this spacious yet dainty super-shop." Super- dreadnaughts and swper-submarines — the latter a really curious combination if thought of from the ety- mological point of view — are frequently mentioned, . . . The same thing has been noted in French, by G. Gaillard who speaks of "la predominance, . . . d'un nombre considerable [de mots] dans la composition desquels entrent des prefixes indiquant l'exces, le rencherissement . . . sur-animal, sur- complety sur-chrStien, sur-estimation, surhomme, sur- monde, surnational, sur-pouse, super-allemand, super- normal, supra-europSen, supra-national, supra-personnel, Revuedephil.fr XXV, pp. 9 and 102 (1911).— Habyey J. Swaxx, French Terminologies in the Making (1918), pp. 46-47. NEW WORDS SELF-DEFINED 185 SWANK I was the envy of the whole section, swanking around telling of the good time I was going to have. — Arthur Guy Empey, Over the Top (1917). To admit enthusiasms is "bad form" if he [the English- man] is a "gentleman"; and "swank," or mere waste of good heat, if he is not a "gentleman." — John Galsworthy, A Sheaf (1916). SWOT We could not forego this much-prized opportunity for exercise and recreation, but once it was over we settled down in grim earnest to "swot" at the subjects re- ferred to. — From Snotty to Sub, by "Heandi," London (1918), p. 90. SYSTEM D With the American Army in the Field, March 16. — "System D" is coming into play in the United States Army. "System D" is a bit of French slang. It means to unmix, to disentangle, to go straight through, to realize that a straight line is really the shortest distance be- tween two points. It comes from the initial letter of the word "debrouiller," which means all these things. When red tape gets everlastingly in the way of a French officer he — if he is the right sort of an officer — 18G NEW WORDS SELF-DEFINED invokes System D. He goes and does, or sees to it that other people go and do, what should be gone and done. Afterward he gets permission. Sometimes even the permission is relegated to System D. — Herbert Corey, Baltimore Star, April 20, 1918. TACHOMETER Many new instruments have been devised for aircraft. These include . . . tachometers, which indicate the engine speed. — Problems of Aeroplane Improve- ment, by Naval Consulting Board of the U. S., Aug. 1, 1918. TAKE OFF The start from Rockaway of the three airplanes, NC-1, NC-3, and NC-4, was made under an overcast sky at 10.0-2, a. if., May 8, 1919. The NC-3, the division "flagplane," took off first. — Lieutenant Commander A. C. Read, Baltimore Sun, June 8, 1919. TANK* Just how the armoured cars, used for the first time by the British against the Huns, were given the name "tanks" was told to-day for the first time by Horace Gaul, a veteran of the war, who is returning to the front, but this time as a Knights of Columbus secretary. •See No Man'i Land. 187 188 NEW WORDS SELF-DEFINED "The front lines used to get the supply of water from small tanks conveyed from the purifying plants to the trenches by motor cars," said Mr. Gaul. "In a few months we began to hear the sound of rivets being driven. This went on day and night for months, and when we asked what they were making they told us 'tanks.' For a year this went on and we began to think they must have enough tanks to carry all the water in the world. Not an inkling of the real truth was made known to us, although we were within sound of the riveters at work all the time. "One day in the direction from which these sounds had come for so many months there came a huge, lumber- ing, steel fortress on wheels. It went right across No Man's Land and cleaned up a party of Huns. Right then and there they were christened 'tanks' by the men, and that name has stuck." — New York Globe, Oct. 24, 1918. Among the new fighting weapons developed in the present war the tank, the basic idea of which was sug- gested by the American farm caterpillar tractor, holds high place as an engine of military warfare. . . . Men who selected the service were attracted- by the recog- nized importance of tanks on the battlefield, and the appeal of its motto, "Treat 'em Rough." — Annual Report of the Secretary of War (1918). TAUBE The accuracy of aim acquired by Private Book Hill, while hunting squirrels in the woods around Gadsden, NEW WORDS SELF-DEFINED 189 Ala., was satisfactorily tested when thirty-eight Taubes (dove-shaped German airplanes) in squadron formation began to sweep the American trenches in the Argonne. The Alabama squirrel sniper was called upon by Lieu- tenant Stephen Townsend to prove his vaunted marks- manship. He did. — Stories of Americans in the World War (1918), p. 62. TAVARISH I am going to try to teach my readers six Russian words. The first is tavarish, it means comrade. There used to be a law against using it. The French, in their Revo- lution, meant about the same thing when they said citoyen. It is a word you hear a thousand times a day everywhere. — William G. Shepherd, Everybody's, Nov., 1918. TAXI-ING The plane bumped across the rough ground, acting very much like an automobile, nosing this way and that as Sidmore sought and finally found the direction of the wind. This maneuvering along the ground was known, in the slang of the camp, as "taxi-ing," being designed as a final test of the motor and other parts before leaving the earth. — D. H. Haines, American Boy, Feb., 1919. TEACHERAGE Texas has 337 teachers' cottages at the present time, according to the report of State Superintendent W. F. 190 NEW WORDS SELF-DEFINED Doughty. Mr. Doughty reports that he is receiving most hearty cooperation from the county superinten- dents of the State in introducing "teacherages" as part of the school plan. — School Life, Washington, D. C, Aug., 1918., TEUFEL HUNDE See Devil Dogs. THE TRADE No one knows how the title of "The Trade" came to be applied to the submarine service. Some say that the cruisers invented it because they pretend that sub- marine officers look like unwashed chauffeurs. Others think it sprang forth by itself, which means that it was coined by the lower deck, where they always have the proper names for things. Whatever the truth, the submarine service is now "The Trade," and if you ask them why they will answer, "What else could you call it? The Trade's 'the trade,' of course." — Rudyard Kipling, New York Times, Current History, August, 1916. THOMASINA ATKINS Very entertaining are these letters by "Thomasina Atkins," private in the W. A. A. C. on active service. "Thomasina" joined up in October, 1917, and was sent to France in December and given work as a clerk. "Thomasina" en masse presents quite as much variety as "Tommy" — "North-country mill girls, munition workers, farm hands, clerks; every possible grade of NEW WORDS SELF-DEFINED 191 society, all out to be heard in every dialect in the King- dom. And Oh ! such odd faces — just like a Phil May panorama." "Thomasina Atkins," we are proud to know, carries on the tradition of her comrade " Tommy." — Spectator, London, Sept. 14, 1918. TIN HAT Of the manifold names applied to the steel helmet, hardly one indicates the material of which it is made. All the familiar Paris words for hat do duty, but not one is really as adequate to the innovation as the Eng- lish "tin hat." — London Times, review of Dauzat's L' Argot de la Guerre (1918). T. N. T. In discussing explosives during one of the booth lectures during the afternoon one of the visiting chemists de- scribed the properties and effectiveness of T. N. T., a powerful military explosive which was generally intro- duced to the world with horrifying significance with the fall of Liege in 1914. T. N. T. is an abbreviation for trinitrotoluol. Powerful as is this explosive, it is neither difficult nor dangerous to make, and can be transported with greater safety than almost any other explosive. When in loose form it is a white solid, half again as heavy as water, and melts well below the boil- ing point of water. It can then be filled into shells without danger from fumes or corrosion of the metal. — New York Times, Nov. 26, 1917. 192 NEW WORDS SELF-DEFINED TNX After exhaustive experiments were made in the short space of two weeks, the bureau decided to replace, as far as possible, the explosive TNT with TNX. These two high explosives are "first cousins"; the latter con- taining xylol instead of toluol. Experimentation showed that TNX possessed practi- cally the same qualities as TNT. — Annual Report of Secretary of the Navy for 1918. TOCK EMMA* After supper I was sitting in the dugout writing home by the light of a flickering candle when I was informed that there was a corporal outside who wanted to see me. He turned out to be Bombardier "Chuck" Gibson who was with the sixty-pound "Tock Emma" (Trench Mor- tar) Battery located on our frontage. . . . "Chuck" promised to bring Howard Brown, who happened also to be in the front line with the "Tock Emmas," over to see me the next day. He told me of a "strafe" they were putting on next morning about 8 :30 and I prom- ised to go over and observe for them. — Lieutenant J. Harvey Douglas, Captured (1918), p. 25. *See Emma Gee. NEW WORDS SELF-DEFINED 193 TOMMY-COOKER When 4 o'clock came around every manjack of us would take out his Tommy -cooker and begin making his tea. What is a Tommy-cooker? That is another trick of the war trade that Tommy taught us. It's a bit of a burlap bag, rolled up very tight and soaked in fat or candle grease. We used to save all scraps of fat for our Tommy-cookers. These burn like candles, without smoke, and you can brew a tin cup of tea over them beautifully. Out in the first-line trenches, within ear- shot of the boches, the Tommies would light their little cookers and earnestly go to the task of upholding British tradition, which before very long became American tradition. — Captain Edward M. Kent, New York Times, Feb. 23, 1919. TOMMYWAACS A report submitted by him [Raymond B. Fosdick] to the Secretary of War suggests an organization mod- elled on the lines of the Woman's^ Auxiliary Army Corps of Great Britain, the so-called "Waacs" or "Tommy- waacs." — New York Times, Nov. 25, 1918. TOO PROUD TO FIGHT The example of America must be the example not merely of peace because it will not fight, but of peace because peace is the healing and elevating influence of 194 NEW WORDS SELF-DEFINED the world and strife is not. There is such a thing as a man being too proud to fight. There is such a thing as a nation being so right that it does not need to con- vince others by force that it is right. — President Wil- son, New York, April 20, 1915. Throughout 1916 and the campaign for reelection, in the face of foreign criticism and partisan impeachment, with the public prints full of distortions of detached statements, such as "too proud to fight," he [President Wilson] carried forward the preachment of America's duty to stand for principles of permanent peace. — Frederick A. Cleveland, in Cleveland and Schafer's Democracy in Reconstruction (1919). TORPEDOPLANE In May, 1917, those who believed in the potentiality of the torpedoplane and hoped that the Allies would put this device into effect against the German Navy before Germany could build torpedoplanes were made heartsick by the report that the British steamship Gena had been torpedoed by a German torpedoplane. — Naval Institute, Annapolis, Md., May, 1919. On one occasion when the experiment of discharging a torpedo from an aeroplane was made, the lightening of the aeroplane had such a serious effect on the latter that the wings collapsed and the pilot was hurled to sudden death. — Daily Mail, London, Dec. 27, 1918. This mystery or "Cuckoo" aeroplane — so called be- cause of its weakness for laying eggs in other people's NEW WORDS SELF-DEFINED 195 nests — is one further testimony to British engineering ability and resourcefulness of our navy. — Daily Mail, London, Dec. 27, 1918. TORPILLAGE "What is a torpillage?'" Jones asked. "A tor pillage" said Colonel Custis, "is a torpedoing. The French cure for shell shock is an electric current so terrible that the patients themselves invented the name tor-pillage for it. A good name, too. I've seen the torpillage administered. It's the strongest and most painful current a man can bear without succumbing. A bedridden paralytic on his first torpillage will give a yell like a wild Indian, spring from bed, strike his physician a terrific blow on the nose, and then dash round and round the room cursing and swearing, beside himself with indignation and rage. After that, of course, he's cured. He can't after that sink back into bed again — a paralytic — can he?" — W. B. Trites, Saturday Evening Post, March 29, 1919. TOTO Pou was found to be too particular and probably too serious a word for the vermin with which the soldier had to contend. Toto is the universal term, which, as Mr. Dauzat neatly shows, was probably taken by the troops in the Champagne direct from the peasants there. — London Times, review of Dauzat's U Argot de la Guerre (1918). 196 NEW WORDS SELF-DEFINED '*' TREAT 'EM ROUGH The men in the tank service have chosen "Treat 'Em Rough" as their slogan, and a huge black cat as the emblem and mascot. Any cat that looks black enough and fierce enough is apt to be kidnapped and adopted by some tank battalion. — Stories of Americans in the World War (1918), p. 162. TRENCH-DREAMS One of the most common, and at the same time most pitiful, of the many mental phenomena of the war is the inability to sleep soundly, and the recurrence of so- called "trench-dreams." It is not uncommon to see soldiers start from their beds in the middle of the night, crying out and weeping, their bodies bathed in perspira- tion, as they dream of being chased by Germans with bayonets, or of being buried under debris by a mine- explosion, or of losing the trench in a fog and being unable to get back. The fear that is found is not the kind the layman might expect. The soldier does not, as a rule, fear injury to himself. He is afraid of doing something wrong, of an emergency in which he may fail and lose the confidence of his comrades. His fear is the fear of being a coward. — Hereward Carrington, quoted in Literary Digest, Nov. 23, 1918. NEW WORDS SELF-DEFINED 197 TRENCH FEET A peculiar affliction, first noticed during this war, is what is known as "trench feet." Where men are required to remain for long periods standing in cold water and unable to move about to any great extent, the circulation of blood in the lower limbs becomes sluggish and, eventually, stops. The result appears to be exactly the same as that caused by severe frost- bite. — Captain Herbert W. McBride, The Emma Gees (1918). TRILLION The consideration of reparations has introduced the word "trillion" in recognizing money, probably for the first time in any single financial operation, for, although millions and billions often have been used in war finance, no sum has yet been reached touching a trillion. In estimating the war losses of all the powers the first figures of one of the great powers aggregated a trillion francs and those of another power were slightly above a half trillion francs, namely, six hundred billion francs. — Associated Press, Paris, March 11, 1919. TROMMELFEUER See drum-fire. u UNITED STATES ARMY On August 7, 1918, the distinguishing appellations "Regular Army," "Reserve Corps," "National Guard," and "National Army" were ordered discon- tinued; and the military forces of the Nation were consolidated into the "United States Army." — Annual Report of the Secretary of War (1918). USONA As a matter of fact, the name Usona (of very easy con- struction, to be sure) was first proposed by a Canadian, James P. Murray of Toronto, in 1885. It was thor- oughly discussed, both pro and con, in the Nation (among other places) in March, 1916. And at the time of The Hague Conference, when the "Americans" first claimed their name — being unwilling, it is said, to come in for seats in the rear of the hall with the U's and the V's — Sir Edward Grey (as he was then) urged upon us, in a speech delivered in London, the name Usona, but, of course, without undue insistence. — Christine Ladd Franklin, New York Times, July 20, 1918. 198 NEW WORDS SELF-DEFINED 199 USONIAN I note that a correspondent objects to the use of the term "American" to designate a citizen of the United States, and suggests the use of the barbarous word "Usonian" instead. — W. J. Burner, Nation, Feb. 10, 1916. Just as the citizen of the "United States of Mexico" is universally and appropriately known as a Mexican, just as the citizen of the "United States of Brazil" is known as a Brazilian, and the citizen of the "Do- minion of Canada" as a Canadian, so the citizen of the "United States of America" is appropriately — may we not even say necessarily and inevitably — known as an American. And this without any more justi- fiable sensitiveness or resentment on the part of the Mexican, the Brazilian, or the Canadian toward the "American" than on the part of the Ithacan or the Utican toward the "New Yorker." Are not the former one and all Americans, and are not the latter one and all New Yorkers? As for the substitute "Usonian,'* "the name which has been devised [from the initials U. S.] for this pur- pose by the makers of the scientific auxiliary inter- national languages," it may be suggested that the word might better be spelt "USonian" (in imitation of the "scientifically" formed, and at one time some- what current term, "APAism," i. e., the propaganda of the American Protective Association), were it not that the irreverent might be tempted to change its form to "USonlian." — Henry Alfred Todd, Nation, Feb. 10, 1916. V VERY LIGHT They also have a parachute star shell which, after reaching a height of about sixty feet, explodes. A parachute unfolds and slowly floats to the ground, lighting up a large circle in No Man's Land. The official name of the star shell is a Very-light. Very- lights are used to prevent night surprise attacks on the trenches. — Arthur Guy Empey, Over the Top (1917). "Ivanowski, send two men aloft with orders to keep a sharp eye ahead for lights — blue Very lights on the bow, or if anything to the port. Straight away — tumble 'em up. . . . What's wrong with you?" — Wil- liam Daniel Steele, Harper's, April, 1919. VISITORIUM See newsfilm. VITAMIN, VITAMINE The idea that there is anything particularly nutritious about beer is negatived by an editorial writer in The Journal of the American Medical Association (Chicago, 200 NEW WORDS SELF-DEFINED 201 November 30) . Tests for the vitamins, now generally recognized as necessary elements of foods, have resulted in showing that they are entirely absent. — Literary Digest, Jan. 4, 1919. Now it happens that the latest discovery of our food chemists is that the very important ingredients of a nutritious diet known as vitamines are lost if dried peas and beans are cooked in the ordinary way, but saved if these legumes are allowed to sprout. — Nation, Novem- ber 2, 1918. VOILA LES AMfiRICAINS! Voila les Americains!" is the title of a poster which is displayed on every Paris hoarding. It shows the German Crown Prince holding a crowbar with which he is trying to force open the door of Paris. He has turned from his task with an expression of acute anxiety for on the wall beside him is the gigantic shadow of an American soldier. When you remember the confidence with which the Kaiser's heir proclaimed his intentions on Paris, there is something rather splendid about such a simple and direct method of jeering. — Roy S. Durstlne, Scrib?ier's Monthly, Nov., 1918, p. 560. VRILLE* I remember when I thought it was time to try a vrille or tail-spin. I knew you put the stick over and crossed the controls, but I'd never seen anybody do it. I went up about 12,000 feet, got off some distance from *See ckaruUUe. 202 NEW WORDS SELF-DEFINED the field, and flew around there for every bit of thirty minutes trying to get up my nerve to try the trick, but too scared to begin. — Captain Edward Victor Rickenbacker, United States Air Service, March, 1919. w 1/ WAACS Here we saw hundreds of "Waacs" and "Penguins" working. England is the only nation that has allowed women in her army, unless it be Russia and her Bat- talion of Death. The Waacs (Woman's Auxiliary Army Corps) consists of many thousands of British women who have enlisted in the army, wear a regular khaki uniform, and live under strict military dis- cipline. At least twenty thousand of them serve close behind the front lines in France as waitresses, house- keepers, clerks, chauffeurs, stenographers, etc., while many more are stationed in posts all over England. The Waacs are auxiliary to the army. — Hamilton Holt, Independent, Dec. 14, 1918. WANGLE Now, contrary to what might have been expected, the war has not depreciated the lingual currency. It has indeed circulated camouflage and strafe but provided they are not naturalized and remain merely denizens, they may be serviceable, while "carry on" actually supplies a word that was badly missed. Nor do we object to wangle. — Spectator, London, Sept. 21, 1918. 203 204 NEW WORDS SELF-DEFINED And wet — always, always wet, unless the weather is clear and the sea is calm — but good sea boats. They [the submarine chasers] wangle through somehow. They weather it out. — Samuel G. Blythe, Saturday Evening Post, Oct. 19, 1918. A propeller had been caught in the mooring cable and wangled it [the mine] about until the mooring parted. — Ralph D. Paine, The Fighting Fleets. "An' with all that influence at the back of yer, yer couldn't wangle a cushier job than this." — Punch, London, Oct. 16, 1918. WASHOUT Small wonder, then, that the day he [Vernon Castle] died and the first Sunday were complete "washouts" at Camp Benbrook. In aviation parlance a "washout" is a day on which planes are not sent up. That there were two washouts occasioned by Vernon's death was a beautiful tribute to him for where so many flyers must be trained, a washout is a rarity. — Irene Castle, Everybody's* March, 1919. WATCHFUL WAITING We shall not, I believe, be obliged to alter our policy of watchful waiting. And then, when the end comes, we shall hope to see constitutional order restored in distressed Mexico by the concert and energy of such of her leaders as prefer the liberty of their people to NEW WORDS SELF-DEFINED 205 their own ambitions. — President Wilson, First An- nual Message, Dec. 2, 1913. WATER BOMB See depth bomb. WEASEL WORDS Colonel Roosevelt had read that President Wilson had said he was in favour of universal training which was not compulsory. In his address delivered, perhaps, fifteen minutes later* the Colonel coined the expression "weasel words," to describe the President's utterance. "What made you think of that expression?" he was asked later. "It's hard to explain what made me think of it," he replied. "Thirty years ago I knew an old guide and he told me about the habits of the weasel. If you placed a weasel alongside an egg, he told me, the weasel would bore a hole in it and suck out all the meat. That was exactly what President Wilson did. He favoured universal training for military service, but not compulsory training. He used words in favour of a good thing but he sucked all the meat out of them by the words which followed his declaration. I don't know what made me think of it at the moment; it just popped into my mind." — New York Times Maga- zine, August 27, 1916. WHIPPET The Whippet — so named I suppose from the speedy dog which chases rabbits to earth — is the pacing drome- 206 NEW WORDS SELF-DEFINED dary of Tankdom. She is light — only a few tons I should guess — and instead of accommodating man Jonah-like in her entrails, carries a cab like a camel's hump, from which one can look, sometimes perpen- dicularly, behind. The Whippet has two engines, one for each of her paw series, and that accounts for her eccentric motion. As she runs her eight, ten, up to a conceivable twenty miles an hour, she squeals rau- cously. — Henry Seidel Canby, Yale Review, Oct., 1918. The smaller tanks, or "whippets," as the British call them, are practically armoured cavalry, only the steed is mechanical and the driver sits inside instead of atop. — New York Tribune, August, 1918. WHIZ-BANG A "whiz-bang" is a shell of such high velocity that its whizz and its bang are almost simultaneous. — William Philip Simms, Baltimore Star, June 22, 1917. November 11, the day the armistice was signed, you remember, is called "Groundhog day" over here, be- cause on that day everyone came out of his hole. And that's the truth, too. You could appreciate the joke if you knew the conditions when the "whiz-bangs" were flying. — Lieutenant L. G. Hayes, Literary Di- gest, Feb. 22, 1919. THE WILL TO— One of the minor manifestations of the prevailing Teu- tonic spirit which led to this War is to be found in the NEW WORDS SELF-DEFINED 207 invention of a comparatively new phrase and its con- stant use by those who were directly responsible for the War in the period preceding its outbreak and through- out the whole of its duration. The phrases— "the Will to Deeds" (der Wille zur Tat), "the Will to Might," "the Will to Victory," "the Will to Unity," even "the Will to Defeat," or, as ascribed to their enemies, "the Will to Destruction," occurred in nearly every pronouncement or speech made by the Kaiser, his statesmen, and generals since 1907. The constant reiteration of such phrases and what they imply, and their continuous repercussion upon the ear of the public, not only of the German people, but of their enemies and of neutrals, have so thoroughly familiarized the world with this unusual and illogical phrase (which, moreover, runs counter to the vernacular character of the German as well as of the English language), that similar phrases have found their way into our own language in these latter days or, at least, into that insidiously dangerous and demoralizing sphere of our language, the "Journalese." — Nineteenth Century and After, Jan. 1919. WILSONITIS Paris, Jan 7. — Paris has W T ilsonitis in a most virulent form. The Spanish "flu," which recently had the town in its clutches, wasn't half so widespread. Presi- dent Wilson just now is the hobby of every Parisian who's old enough to know what it's all about. — C. C. Lyon, Baltimore Evening Sun, Jan. 7, 1919. 208 NEW WORDS SELF-DEFINED WIPERS At various points we came upon interesting trenches, most of which were marked with the name of the point to which they led. One, I remember, was "Wipers Road"; not that it ran all the way to Ypres but led in the direction of that place. — Captain Herbert W. McBride, The Emma Gees (1918). WIRELESS TELEPHONY See radio speech. THE WOOD OF THE AMERICANS The next day, June 27, 1918, the President of France unexpectedly visited the American battlefront. He had come to congratulate the Americans on their splen- did work. The whole Belleau Wood and ridge opera- tions were, he said, peculiarly American in plan and execution and henceforth, in memory of the fighting done there Belleau Wood should be known as the Wood of the Americans. — Stories of Americans in the World War (1918), p. 38. WOP About thirty per cent, of my platoon were Italians — wops if you like. Then we had a number with Polish names and a few German. So you can see that the alien element was heavy. . . . You've got to hand it to NEW WORDS SELF-DEFINED 209 them. They're bear cats! If anybody had told me a year ago that these aliens would fight the way they do I'd have laughed at him. Why, you can take wops from the tenement districts and make them fightin' fools! — George Pattullo, Saturday Evening Post, Nov. 2, 1918. WRENS The "Wrens" (Woman's Royal Naval Service) are at- tached to the navy. While working in the factories side by side with men the women usually discard their military uniforms and don the farmerette khaki bloomer costume. — Hamilton Holt, Independent, Dec. 14, 1918. The "Y," as the Young Men's Christian Association is familiarly known, has been operating in ninety-five per cent, of the places in France where there are three hundred or more American troops, and in the near future the work will be extended to all the smaller groups as well. Hence it has been possible to incorporate the Post Exchanges in the many Young Men's Christian Association centres already established. — Outlook, March 27, 1918. When General Allenby's forces pushed their way across the Jordan two "Y" Fords, loaded with "smokes," were the first cars to cross. — Chaeles W. Whitehaib, Baltimore Evening Sun, Oct. 18, 1918. YEOETTE Thirty-three enlisted men of the Navy Medical Corps stationed at St. Elizabeth's Hospital were entertained yesterday afternoon at a banquet prepared under the direction of Miss Mary O'Connor, "yeoette" of the station. — Evening Star, Washington, D. C, Nov. 29, 1918. 210 NEW WORDS SELF-DEFINED 211 YEOMAN (F) 1 . It has come to the attention of the chief of the bureau of navigation that the terms "yeowoman" and "yeo- manette" have been applied to the young ladies who are serving in the .naval reserve force. 2. The official designation of these young ladies is "Yeoman (F)," and it is hereby directed that the use of these unofficial titles be discontinued. — Army and Navy Register, Washington, D. C, Feb. 15, 1919. YEOMANETTE See yeoman (F). YEOWOMAN See yeoman (F). Y GUN About May, 1918, our own ships began to come over with all these devices installed. They were also equipped with radio telephones, depth charges, and "Y" guns. A "Y" gun is a casting with two arms forming a Y. Each arm holds a depth bomb, which can be shot out by means of an auxiliary powder charge to a distance of 100 feet. — C. F. Scott, New York Times, March 30, 1919. A new gun known as the "Y" gun has been designed and built especially for firing depth charges. All our destroyers and subchasers were equipped with this weapon. — Annual Report of Secretary of the Navy (1918). 212 NEW WORDS SELF-DEFINED YTPSEL Chicago, Dec. 13. — Members of the Young People's Socialist League called "Yipsels," believing that they they were facing jail for spreading propaganda against the nation's war program, had a triplicate officership arranged, with female "reds" in the background, to continue a secret fight under the guise of "athletic, musical, and dramatic clubs," according to evidence introduced to-day in the espionage trial of Victor L. Berger, Congressman-elect from Milwaukee, and his four co-defendants, in Federal Judge Landis's court. — New York Times, Dec. 14, 1918. ZEMGOR The Zemstvos are more or less analogous to our own County Councils. Correspondingly, Russia possesses Town Councils which also have a Union of their own. But the two Unions have worked together, and Russia, as Professor Simpson records in his article in the Nine- teenth Century, has created a synthetic word "Zemgor," on the analogy of our own word "Anzac," to express the combination of the Zemstvos (County Councils) and the Gorod (Town Councils). The Zemgor has made good the deficiencies of the centralized bureauc- racy which has hitherto ruled Russia, and the work it has done is extraordinary in its magnitude. — London Spectator, April 27, 1917. ZERO,* ZERO HOUR I only remained long enough to sight it [rifle] in and get it "zeroed" and was back again in front that same night. "Zeroing" a rifle is the process of testing it out on a range at known distances and setting the sights to suit one's individual peculiarities of aiming. Having once established the "zero" the marksman can always *See the jump off. 213 214 NEW WORDS SELF-DEFINED figure the necessary alterations for other ranges or changed conditions of wind and light. — Captain Her- bert W. McBride, The Emma Gees (1918). We went in on the night of the twelfth and the attack was scheduled for the night of the thirteenth, or rather the morning of the fourteenth, as the preliminary bom- bardment was to commence at twelve-forty-five and "zero" was one-thirty A. M. — Captain Herbert W. McBride, The Emma Gees (1918). Our officers set their watches very carefully with those of the artillery officers before we went forward to the front trenches. We reached the front at 11 p. M. and not until our arrival there were we informed of the "zero hour" — the time when the attack was to be made. The hour of 12.10 had been selected. The waiting from eleven o'clock until that time was simply an agony. Some of our men sat stupid and inert. Others kept talking constantly about the most inconsequential matters. One man undertook to tell a funny story. No one listened to it, and the laugh at the end was emaciated and ghastly. The inaction was driving us all into a state of funk. I could actually feel my nerve oozing out at my finger-tips, and, if we had had to wait fifteen minutes longer I shouldn't have been able to climb out of the trench. — Sergeant Alexander Mc- Clintock, Best o'Luck. ZING They were the picked athletes of the whole English Army and were doing their calisthenics with a precision NEW WORDS SELF-DEFINED 215 and spirit I have never seen ^equalled anywhere. The "pep," "zing," and "vim" were thrilling. — Hamilton Holt, Independent, Dec. 14, 1918. ZOOM* Then I came down the valley and came back on a level with them. I "gave 'er all the gun" and "zoomed" the chateau — that is, I almost went up the front of the place. It was too close for comfort, and I don't know what they thought of me, because I probably gave them a fright. — From an American in France, Inde- pendent, Nov. 16, 1918. ♦See chandelle. THE END THE COUNTRY LITE PRESS GARDEN CITY, N. Y. UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA AT LOS ANGELES THE UNIVERSITY LIBRARY This book is DUE on the last date stamped below DEC 9 mi JUN 9 £PR 3 1955 Jjfft 8 KCD ~QEC1 APR* ^ 9SSS } VP \ umjrl DEC131965 mainTpANI «t-§k DEC 7 MS A.M P.M. __7l8lJ».10lllll2|ll2l3l4'6i6 v «*Jb W' 1963 yj 1 1969 ,\i^ Form L-fl 20m -1,' 42(8510) UNIVERSITY OF CALIF0KN1 AT LOS ANGELES LIBRARY UCLA-Young Research Library PE1689 .S64n y L 009 600 345 4 THFRN REGIONAL LIBRARY ' FACILITY /(A 001345136 4