I thought of wartime words in the most recent holidays when police announced their latest road safety blitz. The headline said "34 caught in police blitz".
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
$0/
(min cost $0)
or signup to continue reading
Newspapers love to use short words, with good reason.
Readers don't want to plough through cumbrous, ponderous and pompous words (like those), they simply want to know what happened.
I think we can blame media for thrusting the word blitz in front of us every time a police operation is launched.
Blitz is nice and short and it has that touch of drama that captures attention. And I suggest that's what the wartime boffins had in mind with blitz. The word is said to have had much more impact on public sensibilities than say the word bombing.
It is a German word absorbed into the English language and became popular to reinforce the horror of German bombing raids on London.
The War Illustrated of October 7, 1939, reported: "In the opening stages of the war all eyes were turned on Poland, where the German military machine was engaged in Blitz-Krieg - lightning war - with a view to ending as soon as possible".
About the same time another publication, American Speech, reported: "Formal committee chairmen must have known how the poor Poles felt when the German blitzkrieg suddenly started 'blitzing' around their ears yesterday noon".
The New York Daily News of October 19, 1939, made a satirical comment about a "blitzkrieg of puns".
Almost overnight the word blitz took off in the English press. The Daily Sketch of September 2, 1940, reported "we 'blitz' hun planes in weekend raids".
A week later the Daily Express of September 9, reported: "Blitz bombing of London goes on all night".
The Daily Sketch obviously liked the word because on September 21, it reported "Neighbourhood Theatre braved the blitz and yesterday presented a new play".
Blitz was in our language and it was here to stay.