Page:Notes and Queries - Series 12 - Volume 9.djvu/420

 342 NOTES AND QUERIES. [i2S.ix.ocr.29 f i92i. Boyle, the great chemist, in 1660, writing, " The inspired air when 'tis exploded " ; and the chain of meaning is completed in More's " gunpowder exploding the bullet " in 1676 (of course, not the earliest mention of gunpowder exploding !). In a similar way our present use of the words (Field) -Marshal (once a groom) and Ambassador (a servant, slave) have reached their present eminence by a sort of inverted slang. I have said slang sometimes verges on poetry -one may go further and say that seen from a certain angle of criticism slang is poetry. Slang is a language in the " making." Poetry (Troieeo) is language made or perfect. Slang, like poetry, is often of metaphors all compact. Let me quote in support of this assertion the American Professors Greenough and Kitt- redge, who write : In making it (slang) men proceed in the same manner as in making language, and under the same natural law. But poetry and slang differ in their motive, for slang is not used simply to express one's thoughts, but from the wish of the individual to distinguish himself by oddity or grotesque humour. The metaphors of slang have not the harmonious or sublime beauties of poetry, but are commonly made by the use of harsh, violent or ludicrous metaphors, obscure analogies, meaning- less words and expressions derived from the less known or less esteemed vocations in our times. Slang may almost be called the only language in which these processes can be seen in full activity. ('Words and their Ways in English Speech,' 1914.) So much for generalities, and now let us come to our War Slang. In support of our proposed collection, and of the wisdom of collecting at all, I cannot do better than give the opinion of perhaps the greatest living English autho- rity on words and language, Dr. Henry Bradley, the editor of the * N.E.D.' and author of the article ' Slang ' in the ' En- cyclopaedia Britannica.' In a letter to me, which he kindly allows me to quote, Dr. Bradley writes from his Officina Verborum, the Old Ashmolean, Oxford, as follows : I strongly agree with you that it is very desir- able that the " War Slang " of each of the nations that took part in the great struggle should be collected and placed on record as completely as possible, while the opportunity still remains. Even those war words that were merely ephe- meral may have their importance as illustrating the manner of operation of the creative forces of language. The simultaneous or rapidly successive appearance of a multitude of new words or phrases expressing a particular class of meanings, and their early disappearance, may sometimes be facts of much significance for the psychological history of the nation or its sol- diers. Words of this temporary kind often find their way into the newspaper records of events, in which it is probable that the future historian will find much of his material. For him, there- fore, a dictionary of these passing words may now and then be as indispensable as a dictionary representing the standard language of the same period. Further, it may well be that a large portion of the vocabulary of " war slang " may survive and even become part of the literary language ; but the words will undergo gradual change of meaning ; and unless their origin and original sense be placed on record while they are still in living memory, future generations will be liable to the same kind of misapprehensions as we now often observe in uninstructed readers of the annals of the seventeenth century. Let us now take two of the best-known French slang words circulated by the war, poilu and boche, and see what we can derive of their history and use from the French slang lexicographers' method of handling them : Poilu. The word poilu has been in existence nearly a century, and its literary locus classicus is Balzac's ' Le Medecin de Campagne,' first published in 1833, where one of his characters, speaking of Napoleon's crossing the Beresina, says : " General Eblee, under whose orders were the pon- toniers, could only find 42 sufficiently in- trepid (assez poilus], as Gondrin says, to undertake the work." Here the word is used as an adjective, but in the form of a substantive it superseded the older " Gro- gnards " of Napoleon's army. The Bulletin de la Societe de Linguistique in 1916 gives ample evidence that the word belonged to military argot before the war. It meant an individual, a man, and not necessarily a hairy or bearded one. It stood essentially for a private soldier as opposed to the " graded " officer : poilu was the word for the young recruit, while bonhomme is used of the older territorials (Dauzat). Let us hear the Poilu (trench journal of Champagne), upon its own name : Le poilu, c'est toi, c'est nous, ce sont les gars aux rudes coeurs et aux vaillants visages, qui se herissent des Vosges a la mer du Nord et tiennent tete aux Barbares, en attendant le succes final. (Larousse : ' Diet, de 1'Argot Poilu,' 1917.) Boche. Here is the short history of the rise and fall of the controversial word boche, as culled from the works of MM. Delvau, Boutmy, Sainean, Esnault, Dechelette, Dauzat, and other eminent French slang historians and lexicographers. The word