Military

How America’s Wars Have Changed The English Language

Speech, much like the world, is in a constant state of flux. The way that wars alter the world, they also modify the way we speak and redefine the way we think. As troops have invaded nations, slang too has invaded our vernacular.

As early as the Civil War, military reporter R.W. McAlpine wrote about slang and its impact on American speech. In his article, “A Word About Slang” in the June 1865 issue of United States Service Magazine, he reflected that war slang was a perversion of the language as a result of the urgency of battle. More contemporary writers like Seth Lerer, author of “Inventing English: a Portable History of the Language,” suggest that slang can instead be considered by modern authors to be a form of innovation.