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| In WWI did they just shout "Hey, look out"? | Oct 23, 2015 5:05 AM PDT | url |
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Added 1 new A* page:For a while I had "red alert" in the captain's little announcement here, and out of curiosity tried to look it up, but to my surprise found that the internet (ie Google) does not have any real idea of where the phrase comes from. It definitely had Cold War usage (a 1958 book by that name by Peter George, for instance (originally "Two Hours to Doom" in the UK), which formed the basis for Kubrick's "Dr. Strangelove" film, on whose screenplay George collaborated), but before that, who knows? Was "red" a reference to Soviet communists? ("Red Scare," a reference to fears of a violent "Bolshevik" uprising in the United States, goes back to at least 1920, and Red Terror came two or three years before that, with the definitely violent Bolshevik campaign of systematic oppression unleashed in Petrograd and Moscow (the Bolsheviks even had a newspaper named "Red Terror," how's that for leveraging media propaganda?)) Tied in specifically with a nuclear threat? (Given that "red" as the highest alert level has figured into a number of official government warning systems since the 70s or so, an exclusive Soviet/nuclear slang origin seems unlikely...but stranger things have happened in etymology and government, I suppose.) A WWII military origin, maybe? You'd think someone would have made a note of it. Like "Dear diary: Today, the captain had a real zinger for getting us on our toes in the air raid drill." Or an old military reference handbook or something. Anyway, someone let Google know.
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