I'm trying to think of a polite way to say that I'm skeptical of that one. Im an amateur but fairly serious WWII buff and I've never heard or read that phrase. And all the men in my family and neighborhood were WWII or Korean vets when I was growing up in the 1950s in America. Dave I have to agree with you on that one. Dave. I've spoken with thousands of US veterans and read accounts of many, many more and I have never heard that term used.
i say Second World War, but usually write World War II. When abbreviating, I've used both WW2 and WWII, but have now settled on WWII for consistency with the earlier conflict: I prefer WWI to WW1. Currently, I use World War II and World War I as tags in my blog, but I'm going to add all the variations. I have heard British people refer to WWII as 'the War' and WWI as 'the first war.' Generally they've been people who would have been born in the late 40s, early 50s.
WWII [QUOTE I have heard British people refer to WWII as 'the War' and WWI as 'the first war.' Generally they've been people who would have been born in the late 40s, early 50s.[/QUOTE] Except for being Canadian, me to a 'T', as in 'before the war' and 'after the war'. When a younger type gives me the usual what are you talking about stare I remember to say 'the second world war'. I have also seen the 'war two' printed somewhere as a quote but can't remember where.
Nothing - if you happen to be a Sovietophile, and always add "(1941-45)" to press the point. And that's what I am, but instread of being a Useful Idiot I'm still an Idiot all right but a Useless one through and through
I saw an article from January 1942 that "officially" named it WWII in the US. "The numeric designation is to be avoided." I may still have it somewhere in this tittering forest of books and papers.
ww2.... Yeah but when did it start? And who was its best General..Monty or Patton... There he goes again, throwing a monkey wrench into the works.
Just out of interest, i stopped to think how we referred to the war at the time. "This bloody war!" comes to mind. Ron
World War II was used as early as 1942, IIRC. (Remembered from a cussin' that took place on another forum years ago, so I may be quite wrong.) I do remember there was a formal "naming" proclamation issued by Truman after the war in the US but for the life of me I can't remember which way it went.
My wife hates it when I use WW2, she says its lazy and looks poor on the page. It is just about the only input she has ever freely given on the subject in about 6 years.
If the job had been done properly the first time, there would have been no need for the second, so how about WW1.0 and WW1.1?
Reminded of Ngrams via a chat with drew elsewhere. Need to look up criteria behind them, but basically a graphical representation of occurrences of different words and phrases in what Google books has digitised. Cannot remember if Newspapers are included. (I know there used to be a more targeted variant - will look into that.) WW2: WWII World War Two: World War 2: Second World War:
I find myself automatically keying in ww2. Could be because the No.2 key is conveniently situated just above the W key, whereas to key in WWII requiires the use of the Capital key plus an extra letter ? Ron
Would be great if Google incorporated internet results into the ngram viewer as well. (A useful tip, if you separate search terms with a comma the results are displayed on the same graph, e.g. http://ww2talk.com/forums/topic/21012-semantics-ww2-or-wwii/?p=323351)
Good man. Though I suspect even had I known that, I would likely not have remembered it last night...
