Here are some of the epithets in common use for German soldiers during World War I:
Bosche: The pejorative French word for German comes from the French “albosche” and “caboche” (cabbage head or block head). This was very commonly applied to German soldiers by the French. The German soldier of World War I or II was hardly known by any other name.
William Casselman, author of Canadian Words and Sayings has this to say about the expression Bosche:
“Boche is a French slang word for ‘rogue’ that was first applied to German soldiers during World War I and was borrowed during the early years of that conflict into British English.
A definition is given in Songs and Slang of the British Soldier: 1914-1918, edited by John Brophy and Eric Partridge, published in 1930. I have increased your note.
Boche is the preferred and most common English spelling. Bosche is a rare alternative spelling in English.
The word was first used in the phrase boche head. The French philologist Albert Dauzat believed that boche was short for caboche, a playful French slang for ‘human head’, much like English comic synonyms for head such as ‘the old noodle’, noggin, nut, numbskull.
One of the ways to say ‘to be obstinate, to be stubborn’ in French is avoir la caboche dure. The root of caboche in the old French province of Picardy is ultimately the Latin word caput ‘head’. Our English word cabbage has the same origin, the compact head of leaves is a perfect ‘caboche’.
Boche Head was used as early as 1862 by stubborn people. It is printed in a document published in Metz. In 1874, French typographers applied it to German typesetters. By 1883, Alfred Delvau’s Dictionnaire de la langue Verte asserts, the phrase had come to mean bad subject and was thus used especially by prostitutes.
The Germans, who had a reputation among the French for being stubborn and unlucky, came to be named after a joking version of German, namely allboche or alboche. Around 1900, Alboche was shortened to Boche as a generic name for Germans. During the war, propaganda posters revived the term using the dirty Boche phrase ‘dirty kraut’.
At the start of World War I, Boche had two meanings in mainland French: (a) German and (b) stubborn, headstrong, obstinate. Quickly during the course of the war, this French slang word was adopted by the English press and public.
By the time of World War II, while boche was still in use in French, it had been replaced in mainland French by other disparaged terms, such as ‘maudit fritz’, ‘fridolin’ and ‘schleu’. These three milder pejoratives were common during the German occupation of France from 1941 to 1945.”3
Fritz – A common German given name.
English terms of contempt during World War II used by British troops were ‘Jerry’ and ‘Fritz’ in the British Army and Navy, and ‘Hun’ in the RAF. Canadian and US troops generally preferred ‘Heinie’, ‘Kraut’ or Fritz. 3
Heinie – Probably a form of Heinz, another common German given name. Heinie or Hiney is dated by Lighter to Life in Sing Sing, a 1904 book and says it was in common use during World War I to denote Germans. 1 Heinie is also defined in the dictionary as slang for buttocks. two
Hun – A throwback to the times of the barbaric German tribes known as the “Huns.”
The use of “Hun” in reference to German soldiers is a case of propaganda. To completely dehumanize the enemy, he must first be thought of as distinctly different from you and yours. Initially, it was quite difficult to make Blighty’s “decent whites” laugh at central European “decent whites”. The solution, then, was to transform them philosophically into rampaging Mongol hordes from the east. A look at the apelike characteristics applied to German soldiers portrayed on Allied propaganda posters makes the point clear. Who would you fear and hate more, a cute blonde-haired, blue-eyed boy from Hamburg or a rapacious ape-like brute from some dark, faraway land?
“Huns” was the result of a comment made by Kaiser Wilhelm when he sent a German expeditionary force to China during the Boxer Rebellion. Basically, he told his troops to show no mercy, saying that 1000 years ago the Huns (a nomadic Asian people, not Germanic in the slightest) led by Attila, had become so famous for their depredations that they were still regarded as wildness. destruction, and urging the 1900s German troops in China to make a similar name for themselves that would last 1,000 years. When the Germans were fighting the French and the British just 14 years later, this piece of prefabricated propaganda was too good to pass up on the Allied side, especially in light of the reports pouring in from Belgium since the early days of the war. war.
Hun is defined in the dictionary as a barbaric or destructive person and also as offensive slang, used as a derogatory term for a German, especially a German soldier in World War I. two
Dutch – used by American soldiers, meaning anyone who spoke with a guttural accent in America was commonly known as a “Dutch”.
Dutch is defined in the dictionary as a term of or relating to any of the Germanic peoples or languages. two
Kraut – an obviously shortened form of sauerkraut. Kraut, krout, crout as used in America in the 1840s to refer to the Dutch and by American soldiers during World War I and II to refer to the Germans with its origin found in sauerkraut. 1 Kraut is defined in the dictionary as offensive slang and is used as a derogatory term for a German. Among Americans, this is the main recognized use of the word. two
Squarehead or Blockhead: Most interesting of all was the appellation “Squarehead” or “Blockhead” as applied to German soldiers and mostly American soldiers. I have often wondered if these two denominations had some anthropological origin. There are numerous references in the literature and by American soldiers to the effect that the shape of the skulls of German soldiers appeared to be “blocked” or “square”. One soldier claims that he made an amateur study of the shape of the skulls of German soldiers and that, in his opinion, they definitely had a “blocked” or “square” configuration. I can understand the expression “knock down the block” or “I’ll knock the block down for you”, “block” being head slang. There was apparently a causal relationship between these last two expressions and “block heads” or “square heads”. Did the German male skulls have anything to do with the physical positions they slept in as babies? Let’s look at some of the origins of “square head” and “block head”.
The idea has been advanced that “square head” and “block head” were due to the shape of the German WWI steel helmet. So far no evidence has been gathered to support this observation.
Blockhead dates back to the 1500s and defines a stupid person, a block of wood for a head. I think it was probably misapplied to Germans because of its similarity to fool and eventually the words became identical. Squarehead has been used to describe Germans and Scandinavians and was used as a mild pejorative for Danes and Swedes in the American Midwest. It is believed to be of Austrian origin since the late 1800s. It defines an ethnic physical characteristic of a square-shaped face exhibited by some northern Europeans. It’s genetic, not how you slept. The similar boxhead appeared in the early 1900s before World War I.
Squarehead appears in Jonathan Lighter’s The Slang of the American Expeditionary Forces in Europe, 1917-1919: An Historical Glossary, American Speech: A Quarterly of Linguistic Usage, vol. 47, Issues 1-2, Spring/Summer 1972 as used in the United States to describe Germans and Scandinavians before World War I. Lighter does not mention the fool and offers no origin for that term.
The standard German military haircut seemed to produce the “square” or “block” look. This would also be in line with the term “jarhead” for a US Marine, again because of this hair style. “Squarehead”, at least, remained a term in vogue in the post-war era for anyone of German origin. Of course, each race and/or nationality had their own terms by which they were described, most of which today would be considered derogatory or racist.
Of course, when one considers the origins of the words ‘Squarehead’ and ‘Blockhead’, the logical question arises: ‘What about ‘Roundheads’, an expression that gained popularity during the English Civil War? Is this more in the way of physical anthropology or how the ’round’ skull was formed in infancy?
In reality, the term “roundheads” for Parliamentarians was a derogatory (and, it seems, class-based) reference to the very short hair worn by London apprentices, with which the Royalists apparently grouped all their opponents. (The counter-insult, “Cavalier,” compared royalists to knights, that is, the servants of authoritarian Catholic Spain.) See Martyn Bennett, The Civil Wars in Britain and Ireland 1638-1651, Blackwell, 1997, pp. 104-5.
Roundheads” from the English Civil War refers to the haircuts of the more straight-laced members of the Parliamentarian forces: their very short, very conservative, basic bowl look. It distinguished them from the (royalist) “gentlemen”, often elegantly hairstyles. , gentlemen of noble birth and often of considerable wealth, on the other hand, with their long, striking locks.
“Roundhead” as a propaganda epithet for Parliamentarian troops seems to have originated from the fact that they wore their hair short rather than the archetypal loose locks of Royalist cavalrymen. While this was not always the case (indeed there is a famous van Dyke portrait of George, Lord Digby and William, Lord Russell, the former in elegant ‘Cavalier’ garb and flowing headgear, the other in somber black Puritan: the former fought for Parliament, the latter for the King) was enough of a stereotype for propagandists to use both ‘Round Head’ and ‘Cavalier’ as terms of insult, although this did not prevent both groups of soldiers from taking the terms at ease. hearts as a compliment. If one is to believe those two great historians Walter Carruthers Seller and Robert Julian Yeatman: The Roundheads, of course, were so called because Cromwell made all their heads perfectly round, so that they would present a uniform appearance when placed in a line. . In addition to this, if any man lost his head in action, the artillery could use it as a cannonball (which was done at the siege of Worcester).
As for the denominations, we see that the German was less affectionately called Huns, Boche and Jerrys. American soldiers were called Yanks and Doughboys, while the British were called Brits or Tommys, and the French Poilus.” 4
GRADES
1. “The Jargon of the American Expeditionary Forces in Europe, 1917-1919: A Historical Glossary,” by Jonathan Lighter, American Speech: A Quarterly of Linguistic Usage, Vol. 47, Issues 1-2, Spring/Summer 1972.
2. Free Dictionary, http://www.thefreedictionary.com
3. http://www.billcasselman.com and specifically his website http://www.billcasselman.com/wording_room/boche.htm. Material used with the permission of Mr. Casselman.
4. Chenoweth, H. Avery, and Brooke Nihart, Semper Fi: The Definitive Illustrated History of the US Marines. New York: Main Street, 2005, page 142.