What is the origin of the words "hunn" and "bosch" as a reference to Germans during the world wars
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They are derogatory terms meant to hurt the enemy. "Kraut" comes from sauerkraut, a food that originated in Germany. Hun refers to bands of uncivilized tribes who invaded Europe during the Dark Ages. And Bosch is a French term used to insult the Germans.\n\nThese names are comparable to calling Islamic terrorists "Towel heads." Not nice.
578919
Everyone is wrong except the guy who said it was from Anglo-Saxon.  "F..k" has a long pedigree in the Germanic languages.  It was found in Proto-Germanic about 2500 years ago as the verb *fukan 'have intercourse'.  This was not vulgar at that time and was a euphemism for some older word.  Ultimately, it comes from Proto-Indo-European *pug- "to strike", from which we get the borrowed Latin form pugilism 'boxing'.
1156001
The Germans themselves call it Deutschland because the deutsch in Deutschland probably derives from the Indo-European root teuta- (or tewt-, depending on which authority you believe), the source of our word Teuton. Teuta- means "the tribe" or "the people," the word the early Germans used to describe themselves.\n\nThe various names for Germany are perhaps the extreme example of diversity in geographical nomenclature. The Italians call Germany Germania, but their word for a German is tedesco, which is their quaint attempt to spell Teuton. The Polish word for Germany is Niemcy, whose meaning is entirely mysterious.\n\nThis can go on and on - but lets just say - Deutschland is a German's term (word) for their country.\n\nFor info on Holland or The Netherlands goto:\n\nhttp://www.geerts.com/holland/holland-ancient.htm\n\nYou really should learn how to search the web yourself for your own homework and answers............
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This is a last name. It's origin is Scottish.\nDefinition: 1) One who came from the district of Buchanan, a location near Loch Lomond in Scotland. From the Gaelic elements buth, meaning "house" and chanain, meaning "of the canon." \nDefinition: 2) An anglicization of the German buchenhain, meaning "beech wood."
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They are best known for collecting (or writing) the stories in the book Kinder- und Hausmärchen, which we know as Grimm's Fairy Tales.  They were also philologists (what we would call linguists today).  They worked on a dictionary and are known in linguistics for Grimm's Law, (First German Sound Shift) which gives the relationship of consonents between German, English and Latin (I am stating this roughly).  As an example, in Germanic languages (German, English, Dutch) the 'p' from non Germanic langauges (Latin, for example, 'ped' as a root for foot) became 'f' in Germanic languages (German Fuß, English foot)
110653
They are relics from the language the word was adapted from.  English has traces of latin, Greek, French, German, Saxon, and Old Norse, and words with similar silent letters were from the same mother tongues.  Hence, walk, talk, and stalk are related; reign, malign, sign, and feign are related; and knob, knock, knoll, and knee are related.  The distinctions aren't entirely clear, because there's a lot of interbreeding among languages, and the people who codified english spelling weren't exactly linguistic scientists.
675060
The nickname jerrys was a name given to the germans because they had fuel cans on their army vehicles called jerry cans.
167235
If you changed the spelling, you would lose the etymology of the word. It derives from the word Wodnesdæg (the day of the germanic god Woden, also known by the name Odin)
936791
Choose from those in 'The Penguin Book of First World War Poetry' - not only English but Russian, French, German, Italian, American. Please remember these people were also involved in the wars! Personal favourites? 'Dulce et decorum est', Wilfred Owen - grandfather was a gas attack victim: 'The Kite', Aleksander Blok - 12 lines that could change your perception of warfare (first heard at a comrade's funeral!). Also, 'Do not Stand at My Grave and Weep', Anonymous - I served!
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war    ( P )  Pronunciation Key  (wôr)\nn. \n\nA state of open, armed, often prolonged conflict carried on between nations, states, or parties. \nThe period of such conflict. \nThe techniques and procedures of war; military science. \n\nA condition of active antagonism or contention: a war of words; a price war. \nA concerted effort or campaign to combat or put an end to something considered injurious: the war against acid rain. \n \nWith that being said...\n\nThe chaos of war is reflected in the semantic history of the word war. War can be traced back to the Indo-European root *wers-, “to confuse, mix up.” In the Germanic family of the Indo-European languages, this root gave rise to several words having to do with confusion or mixture of various kinds. One was the noun *werza-, “confusion,” which in a later form *werra- was borrowed into Old French, probably from Frankish, a largely unrecorded Germanic language that contributed about 200 words to the vocabulary of Old French. From the Germanic stem came both the form werre in Old North French, the form borrowed into English in the 12th century, and guerre (the source of guerrilla) in the rest of the Old French-speaking area. Both forms meant “war.” Meanwhile another form derived from the same Indo-European root had developed into a word denoting a more benign kind of mixture, Old High German wurst, meaning “sausage.” Modern German Wurst was borrowed into English in the 19th century, first by itself (recorded in 1855) and then as part of the word liverwurst (1869), the liver being a translation of German Leber in Leberwurst.
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Gesundheit is the German word for health. When a person sneezes, Germans typically say Gesundheit! to wish them good health. This expression has found its way into the English language via Ashkenazi Jews who were immigrating in large masses to the United States during the early twentieth century. It is sometimes used instead of the more common "bless you". Also, in Germany it is a common phrase used before giving a toast. Gesundheit is also used in Australia. It was imported to South Australia through the Evangelical Lutheran refugees who fled the established Lutheran church in the east of Germany. These Silesian immigrants spoke their own language until the two World Wars caused a dramatic decline in the use of German in Australia. Gesundheit was used until recent times by the majority English speaking population. Its usage seems now to have declined.\n\nThere are different theories regarding the origin of this phrase. One idea is that the expression stems from the Middle Ages when the Bubonic Plague was threatening European health. In this case the person saying gesundheit was actually wishing good health upon themselves, since they may have been infected by the one who sneezed. During this time it was also commonly believed that sneezing made one's body vulnerable to evil spirits. Thus another plausible explanation is that gesundheit was a blessing to ward off demons while the sneezer's body was defenseless.
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I answered you other question more thoroughly. You may want to go back and look at my response there.\n\nBurkhardt is German and Dutch in origin.
1008803
Refer to your last posting of the question, but anti-semitism ran high and Hitler used the Dolchstoss Legend to blame the jews for Germany's loss of WWI.  The song is a social critique of how people blamed the Jews for everything that went wrong, however justified it may (not) be. \n\nThe Dolchstoss Legend was a very powerful tool used by politicians following WWI that showed their hatred towards the terms of the Treaty of Versailles.\n\nEdit: I'm getting the sense that some other answerers have not heard the song or read its lyrics.  The song is satirical and designed as a social commentary, much like Jonathan Swift's "A Modest Proposal" written in 1729.  While Swift did write that the eating of Irish children would allievate the famine, he was doing so to get another point across.  In the Hollaender song, he is trying to show how stupid it is to blame the Jews for everything as they cannot possible be responsible.
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As you might know, it's bad luck to say Good luck in a theatre. \nFrom the website:\nGermans say Hals- und Beinbruch, “neck and leg break”, as ways of wishing someone good luck without any fear of supernatural retaliation. It is sometimes said that the German expression is actually a corruption of a Hebrew blessing hatzlakha u-brakha, “success and blessing”, which may have been borrowed via Yiddish. Whatever its source, the most plausible theory is that Hals- und Beinbruch was transferred into the American theatre (in which Yiddish- or German-speaking immigrant Jews were strongly represented) sometime after World War I.
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Because they are of Germanic descent. Dutch = Deutsch. \n\nPeter Brooke, Kinmuck Scotland\nI'd always thought it was a corruption of Deutsch, similar to the phrase 'Pennsylvania Dutch', who hail from Germany rather than the Netherlands. \n\nRonald T Elsworth, Chicago USA\n"There are the Potsdam Dutch, the Rotterdam Dutch, and the goddam Dutch". I can't remember the exact origin of this quote, except that it was from an English source at the time of our rivalry in the seventeenth century. At that time, dialects of "Deutsch" were both more distinctive and more widely used than today, and Englishmen considered Holland to be one of many German countries. After centuries of separate political and cultural development, Dutchmen have told me that they find the term offensive. Sadly, it remains the only word our language has for a "Hollander". \n\nBill Irving, Clacton UK\nSpecifically, the Netherlanders were the "Low Dutch". People from German speaking countries were the "High Dutch". Nowadays Germans can speak either Hochdeutsch (official German)or Platdeutsch, but how similar the latter is to the language of Amsterdam, I don't know. \n\nChristopher Young, Sheffield England\nThe term 'Hollander' isn't even really accurate, as technically it only refers to someone from the two western provinces of North and South Holland (including Amsterdam, The Hague and Rotterdam). People from the north, east and south of the country can get quite offended if you refer to them as 'Hollands' rather than 'Nederlands'! \n\nJames Geldart, London UK\nWhen I stayed with a Dutch family about twenty years ago, I happened to mention the word 'Dutch' in conversation, whereupon the father of the family got quite upset, thinking I was accusing him of being German. He was obviously no fan of the Germans as a result of his war experiences, and insisted that he was 'Hollands'. Incidentally, I've always been puzzled by the fact that some French people call Holland 'L'Holland', which is pronounced (more or less) 'Lowland'. Is this coincidence? \n\nChris Colley, Cambridge UK\n`Dutch 'is ultimately derived from an Indo-european root meaning 'people'. The reflex of the same root may be seen in the Welsh word 'tud' (people) which is to be found in the personal name Tudur (English Tudor )which is derived from an earlier form which meant 'king of the people'. The root is also to be found in the personal name Tudno (one familiar with / known by his people) which one can see in the seaside town of Llandudno (Dudno\nGuto Rhys, Madrid, Spain\nSeeing as the Dutch refer to themselves as "nederlanders", there's no reason why the English can't use the equivalent 'netherlanders', in the same vein as 'greenlanders' or indeed 'new zealanders', but that's a different question. \n\nAndy, den haag nederland\nDutch is derived from the earlier common language spoken in the Low Countries called "Diets". \n\nFrank Landsman, Bandung, Indonesia
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That's a very good point. The swastika was originally a (Native American?) sign of peace. Then that asshole Hitler had to go and fuck things up for everybody else.
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In German, it is called "stechscritt".  "Scritt" means "step", but "goose" is "gänse" and "Stech" doesn't translate to anything in English, so the Nazi didn't call it the goose-step but that is the English translation.