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From: "John Dean" <john-dean@frag.lineone.net>
Newsgroups: alt.languages.english
Subject: Re: Origin of "flak"
Date: Mon, 20 Feb 2006 17:22:51 -0000
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Chris Croughton wrote:
> On Mon, 20 Feb 2006 00:49:06 GMT, Steve D McDonald
> <ugowshir@mindspring.com> wrote:
>
>> 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).
>
> Interesting. The Concise OED gives it as "Flug(zeug)abwehrkanone",
> literally anti-air(craft) gun. It could have been both, of course.
And OED on CD-ROM says [G., f. the intials of the elements of
fliegerabwehrkanone 'pilot-defence-gun'.]
My Collins German-English has the same as the Concise Oxford.
>
> The WW1 term (at least amongst British fliers) was 'Archie', I've
> heard (but not seen confirmed) that it may have been a word used for
> the letter 'A' in signalling (similar to the "Able Baker Charlie Dog"
> alphabet), it may also have been a softening of "ack-ack" (AA or
> Anti-Aircraft).
OED again : " 1922 Raleigh War in Air I. 343 The anti-aircraft guns got
their name of 'Archies' from a light-hearted British pilot, who when he
was fired at in the air quoted a popular music-hall refrain-'Archibald,
certainly not!' "
>
>
> I'm glad other people run across words "by accident" in the
> dictionary. I always imagine that it was a dictionary Hamlet was
> reading when he replied "Words, words, words"...
Or when Troilus answered "Words, words, mere words, no matter from the
heart"
--
John Dean
Oxford
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