VERB "TO STRAFE"

Otago Daily Times, Issue 24627, 7 June 1941, Page 15

VERB "TO STRAFE"

FREE USE OF "BLITZ" THE INCORRIGIBLE ENGLISH In an R.A.F. Middle East communique occurred a reference to " ground strafing of the retreating enemy between Derna and Barce." Possibly that is the first appearance in official communiques of the verb "strafe" and its derivatives though it may have been used in the last war, states the Manchester Guardian. It is, of course, a borrowing from the German. Even as early as 1914 the zealots of that sombre race had been recommended to use " Gott strafe England " ("God punish England") as a form of salutation even as their equally benighted successors now use "Hell Hitler." It first became widely known in this country because Lissauer made " Gott strafe England" the refrain of his once famous " Hymn of Hate " (no longer approved in Germany because its composer was a Jew). It quickly became a universal term in the British Army for a bombardment of any kind, and so well established, that it does not need a place in the Supplement to the Oxford English Dictionary because it appeared, supported by several English quotations, in the normal course of the dictionary's progress when the " St-" section emerged in 1919. (As an example of the growth of the language it may be noted that when the first section of the O.E.D. appeared in 1888 there was no place for " adenoids " in the now universal "T. and A." sense.). "Blitz" in the sense of a heavy air raid on a civilian centre may be tipped with confidence as another borrowing from the German which will not easily be now ejected from the English tongue. Terrible people, those English—they will not take anything seriously and they twist and maltreat the sacred German vocabulary in order to indicate their contempt for both threats and performances.