![]() ![]() The word has been common in English from the beginning of the 14th Century and has had almost seventy variations in spelling. Soldier is from an old French word soude, and the late Latin soldaris (soldum pay), the French sou is another modern derivative. However, in the Old Testament you find the modern meaning, in the Book of Samuel you read or may read that the Philistines gathered their armies together for warfare. 7, we find:-"Who goeth a warfare anytime at his own charge," and it is found with this meaning in 15 th Century writers. ![]() Warfare had the additional meaning of an expedition in early times. Krieg, which originally meant striving after, has only in modern German taken on its current meaning. the Anglo-Saxons gewinn ( winnan meaning to strive). The Teutons thought it unlucky to have a special word for war so used many euphemisms, the old Norse language had the word ' ufrithr or un-peace. The Romance languages adopted it because the latin word bellum was too much like the word for beautiful, bellus. It was brought to England by the Normans. It was adopted by the French as werre, the modern guerre, and by some of the other Romance languages as guerra. War is derived from the old High German werran, to embroil (hence the modern German, wirren to confuse). In modern times we have as an example of this use 'The Salvation Army'. Chambers Cyclopedia of 1751 gins the following reference: "A naval or sea army is a number of ships of war equipped and manned with sailors and marines under an admiral." In the 16 th and 17 th centuries army was occasionally used as another name for a fleet, for instance in Selden's Mare Clausum we get: 'The King commanded that £21,000 should bee paid to his Armie (for so that fleet is called everywhere in English Saxon,) which rode at Grenewich." In a figurative sense meaning either a vast host of men or a multitude of things, "army" has been common since the beginning of the 16th Century, occurring often in the Bible, Shakespeare, Spenser, etc. Chaucer, Caxton and Lord Berners, in the 14th, 15th and 16th centuries, respectively, all three use the word "army" for a military and naval expedition, and many other writers in those centuries thus describe an armed force, either by sea Or by land. In 1647, two years before the Commonwealth the Parliamentary Forces were alluded to as "the Army" from about this time, when a standing army was first inaugurated, the word began to acquire its modern sense until in the reign of James II it was applied to the whole of the land forces of England. A little later it was used to designate either sea or land forces, or sometimes both. Its origin is obvious from the past participle of the Latin verb armare, through the French armée and the cognate Spanish and Portuguese armada, but it was in the sense of the last mentioned word that it was first used in English, literally meaning an armada. ![]() It may not be generally recognized that the word Army did not become firmly established in its present meaning until the end of the 17th Century. ![]() Let us first deal with some general military terms. It may indeed be possible to correct a few erroneous interpretations which have crept into print, for jumping at origins is just as dangerous as jumping at conclusions. The endeavour has been to trace roughly the origin, and by that means, to explain the modern meaning of certain military words. In the following notes no attempt has been made to trace all the vagaries of each word mentioned, only a few of the most striking and interesting episodes in its career have been touched on and only a few of the foreign words connected with its history or travels have been mentioned. Notes on the Origin and Derivation of Some Military TermsĬanadian Defence Quarterly, Vol XII, No 3, April, 1935 ![]()
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