When were the terms ‘World War I’ and ‘World War II’ coined?
In the aftermath of the war that raged from 1914-18, people struggled to come to terms with devastation and death the likes of which had never been seen before
The term ‘world war’ may have appeared in print before the 20th century – the Oxford English Dictionary cites an early use from 1848 – but the war was the first conflict that seemed truly global.
In 1918, while chatting with an American historian, the controversial war correspondent Lieutenant-Colonel Charles à Court Repington realised the recently ended conflict needed a name befitting its scale.
He quickly discounted ‘The German War’ as he didn’t want to give the enemy nation the satisfaction of prominence, so settled on the ‘First World War’. It became the title of his wartime diaries published in 1920.
The controversial war correspondent Lieutenant-Colonel Charles à Court Repington realised the recently ended conflict needed a name befitting its scale
For most Brits, however, the term ‘The Great War’ was the standard sobriquet for many years. With the outbreak of hostilities in 1939, America’s Time magazine immediately adopted ‘WW2’, a phrase copied by President Roosevelt and made official by the US government in 1945.
This article was taken from BBC History Revealed magazine
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