Jasper County Democrat, Volume 18, Number 21, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 16 June 1915 — WAR AND WORDS [ARTICLE]

WAR AND WORDS

Things \\ e Are Beginning to JLearn i' rom the Great. European Conflict. World war has proved to be an enricher of vocabularies. Terms like "mobilization” and "mortarium” have become a part of everyday speech since the days of last July and August. The American public, long unfamiliar with such matters, can now distinguish with tolerable accuracy between a cuirassier and a Cossack; the uhlan and the dfagooiii; a submersible and . submergible. Along with a better and a tar more intimate knowledge of Euro ean geography has come a habit of making finer distinctions between technical terms. It is curious to note old words like dart, mortar and pilot taking on new meanings. Primitive man fought with darts. They disappeared- trom what we were pleased to term modern warfare and •they have returned as missiles designed to be dropped from skyeraft. Some of the early types of artillery were mortars, but the Germans have given the world a new meaning by their modifications of this gun and by putting it to new uses. We have always thought of the pilot as having to do with naval affairs, but the air pilot is one of the biggest factors in the present struggle. There- are certain new words, too, coming out of the struggle. Air base is one of these, ooagulen is another, and trinitrotolulene is perhaps the newest. Air base explains itself, while coagulen is a preparation which will instantly stop the flow of blood from a wound. Trinitrotolulene is a fulminate recently perfected. Taube, the descriptive name given the German monoplane, has come to us out of the war along with “territorial,” an English term for forces raised for home defense. We are gradually becoming familiar with the fact that when the war cables talk of petrol supplies this refers to plain old gasoline. We are mastering, too, the difference between a pacifist and a piou-piou, a Highlander and a huzzar. Xeutralitz, too, is an old word that has taken on some strange, new and somewhat twisted meanings since the uhlans galloped across the east Belgian frontier a few months ago.—St. Louis Republic.

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