Date:  Sat, 15 Nov 1997 13:01:53 -0500
From:  Gregory {Greg} Downing <downingg[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]IS2.NYU.EDU>
Subject: Re: VETERANS DAY SPECIAL: World War

At 11:39 AM 11/15/97 -0500, you wrote:
>On Sat, 15 Nov 1997, Gregory {Greg} Downing wrote:
>
>> In 1919 they were innocent enough not to realize they would need to number
>> them (that's not an original comment from me; I read or heard it somewhere).
>
>Actually, the term _First World War_ appears at least as early as 1920.
>In that year, Charles a Court Repington published a book entitled _The
>First World War, 1914-1918_.
>

Well, I should know by this point never to rely on what a historian says
about language-usage -- they're historians "rerum," not historians
"verborum" aka etymologists....

But who knew there'd be a second in 1920, besides maybe John Maynard Keynes
in his _Economic Consequences of the Peace_ (1919)? I wonder what CaCR's
insight/agenda/etc. was in assigning an ordinal in 1920? Do you know off the
top of your head from having seen the cite? Seems like titling the book that
in 1919 would be a pretty provocative thing to do. Maybe the pessimistic
aspect of postwar mood or Zeitgeist was at work (cf. the huge success of
Spengler's _Untergang des Abendlandes_/_Decline of the West_ in about
1919-20 right after the book appeared).

Greg Downing/NYU, at greg.downing[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]nyu.edu or downingg[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]is2.nyu.edu