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From: Steve D McDonald <ugowshir@mindspring.com>
Newsgroups: alt.languages.english
Subject: Origin of "flak"
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Date: Mon, 20 Feb 2006 00:49:06 GMT
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I'm 55 years old and all my life I've used and heard others use the
phrase, "Don't give me any flak..." Only in the past month or so did I
discover that it's a wartime acronym for the unwieldy German word:
fliegerabwehrkanone (flier defense gun). I knew it meant antiaircraft
fire, but never knew the German word until I ran across it by accident
under "flak" in Webster's dictionary.
-- Steve M
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