Civil War Lingo: Birth of a New Language
The fire of the American Civil War forged not only a new national identity but also a new national language. Erudite orators, literary lions, unyielding politicians, gritty generals, boys in the trenches, women on the homefront (and in the field)--all, singed by the fire, spoke and wrote in urgent tones about the flaming grandeur engulfing them. This was not an ordinary war. It was a brothers' war. Love and hate were fused and confused. And out of the heights and depths of those mixed emotions came an incredibly rich range of cries and quips, poems and songs, prayers and speeches, reports and dispatches, letters and diaries. Thus was created a language and literature of the people, not of the scholars; heated and hammered out by the raw experience of life and death, not by study.
Hundreds of words and phrases reflect the time (1861-65) and the people of the American Civil War. The expressions fall into three broad categories: general language of the era, military terms, and soldiers' lingo.
The language of the era includes many expressions still familiar today. For example, the canned food industry began just before the Civil War, but it was the wartime production of canned products, especially the canned rations given to the soldiers, that made most Americans aware of such food.Canned vegetables, canned tomatoes, canned goods, and canned milk became familiar American expressions during the war.
Gasoline, too, was in the early stages of its development during the Civil War. The word gasolinemade its first appearance at that time.
The United States mail service was divided into classes in 1863, thus creating the postal terms first class, second class, and third class. In God We Trust, as a motto on United States money, was first authorized by Congress in 1864 for a two-cent bronze coin. A greenback was a legal-tender note (one side of which was printed in green ink) used as currency in place of gold, first authorized by the United States government during the Civil War.
Military terms include the names of new weapons, such as Gatling gun (a forerunner of the machine gun). The Civil War also saw the creation of some new American ranks, notably admiral, commodore, and ensign (all three officially adopted by the Union in 1862).
Civil War soldiers were incredibly inventive in their use of language. One of their favorite patterns was to apply an official word or phrase in a completely unexpected way. For example, in the military,to flank meant to go around (an enemy's flank); soldiers extended that sense, so that to avoid irksome duty was to flank it, to flank a farmer out of his pig was to take it on the sly, and to execute a flank movement was to evade lice by turning underwear inside out.
Many expressions reflect the rural background of most Civil War soldiers. For example, on a farm, a crop parched by drought was said to be gone up (as in "burned up" or "gone up in smoke"); when farm boys went to war, they used the expression gone up to describe any hopeless, desperate, or finished situation, either a minor personal incident or a major military event. Other expressions of rural origin include beehive (knapsack), Here's your mule ("We're here"), and weevil fodder (hardtack).
Soldiers used colorful terms for various weapons: coffee-mill gun, European stovepipe, and pumpkin slinger, to name a few. They called their equipment dog tent, horse collar, and so on. Uniform ornaments ended up with terms like chicken guts and sardine box. Soldiers loved to name their footwear: crooked shoe, ferryboat, whang.
Both armies battled the body louse, known as a bodyguard and a crumb, as well as diarrhea and dysentery, called the quickstep and the evacuation of Corinth, among other names. Complaining was universal: all in the three years ("all the same to the average soldier"); rich man's war, poor man's fight (both sides allowed wealthy draftees to hire substitutes); Who wouldn't be a soldier? (a sarcasm).
Food was a favorite topic, and the soldiers' slang terms said much about their opinions of it. The Union issued its soldiers dehydrated mixed vegetables in solid form officially known as desiccated vegetables, which the troops called desecrated vegetables. Other food terms include hellfire stew, embalmed beef, sheet-iron cracker, son of a seadog, and worm castle. A cook was a dog robber.
Personal names spawned many terms, such as Jeff Davis box (a creaking, ill-built military wagon in the Confederate army), Lincoln pie (a Union government-issued hardtack cracker), and Sherman's hairpin (a railroad rail twisted around a tree, a sight made famous during General Sherman's destructive March to the Sea).
Epithets abounded: buttermilk ranger (a Southern infantryman's derogatory term for a cavalryman),hospital buzzard (a malingerer who overextended his hospital stay), mossyback (someone who hid from the war, presumably in a remote forest where moss would grow on his back), webfoot (an infantryman), and many others. A doctor was opium pills, old quinine, and loose bowels (because a doctor treated so much dysentery).
These few words and phrases merely hint at the vast, rich language legacy bequeathed to us by the people who lived through the American Civil War.
http://voices.yahoo.com/civil-war-lingo-birth-language-353544.html?cat=37
Hundreds of words and phrases reflect the time (1861-65) and the people of the American Civil War. The expressions fall into three broad categories: general language of the era, military terms, and soldiers' lingo.
The language of the era includes many expressions still familiar today. For example, the canned food industry began just before the Civil War, but it was the wartime production of canned products, especially the canned rations given to the soldiers, that made most Americans aware of such food.Canned vegetables, canned tomatoes, canned goods, and canned milk became familiar American expressions during the war.
Gasoline, too, was in the early stages of its development during the Civil War. The word gasolinemade its first appearance at that time.
The United States mail service was divided into classes in 1863, thus creating the postal terms first class, second class, and third class. In God We Trust, as a motto on United States money, was first authorized by Congress in 1864 for a two-cent bronze coin. A greenback was a legal-tender note (one side of which was printed in green ink) used as currency in place of gold, first authorized by the United States government during the Civil War.
Military terms include the names of new weapons, such as Gatling gun (a forerunner of the machine gun). The Civil War also saw the creation of some new American ranks, notably admiral, commodore, and ensign (all three officially adopted by the Union in 1862).
Civil War soldiers were incredibly inventive in their use of language. One of their favorite patterns was to apply an official word or phrase in a completely unexpected way. For example, in the military,to flank meant to go around (an enemy's flank); soldiers extended that sense, so that to avoid irksome duty was to flank it, to flank a farmer out of his pig was to take it on the sly, and to execute a flank movement was to evade lice by turning underwear inside out.
Many expressions reflect the rural background of most Civil War soldiers. For example, on a farm, a crop parched by drought was said to be gone up (as in "burned up" or "gone up in smoke"); when farm boys went to war, they used the expression gone up to describe any hopeless, desperate, or finished situation, either a minor personal incident or a major military event. Other expressions of rural origin include beehive (knapsack), Here's your mule ("We're here"), and weevil fodder (hardtack).
Soldiers used colorful terms for various weapons: coffee-mill gun, European stovepipe, and pumpkin slinger, to name a few. They called their equipment dog tent, horse collar, and so on. Uniform ornaments ended up with terms like chicken guts and sardine box. Soldiers loved to name their footwear: crooked shoe, ferryboat, whang.
Both armies battled the body louse, known as a bodyguard and a crumb, as well as diarrhea and dysentery, called the quickstep and the evacuation of Corinth, among other names. Complaining was universal: all in the three years ("all the same to the average soldier"); rich man's war, poor man's fight (both sides allowed wealthy draftees to hire substitutes); Who wouldn't be a soldier? (a sarcasm).
Food was a favorite topic, and the soldiers' slang terms said much about their opinions of it. The Union issued its soldiers dehydrated mixed vegetables in solid form officially known as desiccated vegetables, which the troops called desecrated vegetables. Other food terms include hellfire stew, embalmed beef, sheet-iron cracker, son of a seadog, and worm castle. A cook was a dog robber.
Personal names spawned many terms, such as Jeff Davis box (a creaking, ill-built military wagon in the Confederate army), Lincoln pie (a Union government-issued hardtack cracker), and Sherman's hairpin (a railroad rail twisted around a tree, a sight made famous during General Sherman's destructive March to the Sea).
Epithets abounded: buttermilk ranger (a Southern infantryman's derogatory term for a cavalryman),hospital buzzard (a malingerer who overextended his hospital stay), mossyback (someone who hid from the war, presumably in a remote forest where moss would grow on his back), webfoot (an infantryman), and many others. A doctor was opium pills, old quinine, and loose bowels (because a doctor treated so much dysentery).
These few words and phrases merely hint at the vast, rich language legacy bequeathed to us by the people who lived through the American Civil War.
http://voices.yahoo.com/civil-war-lingo-birth-language-353544.html?cat=37