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Imagine a small room ten feet square and six feet high with walls of thick rough concrete. his description of a pill-box is as follows: “This pill-box was the only piece of good cover in the whole battalion area. It is well written and detailed account of his activities both in and behind the lines. In the introduction the author states that this book was started during 1918, before the end of the war. Small concrete fort, occurs repeatedly in official account of award of VC Nov.27 1917”.)įirst World War “Pill-box” on the Canadian side of the trenches at Vimy Ridge, France A Subaltern’s War However, according to The Etymological Dictionary of Modern English (7) the term Pillbox was used repeatedly in an account of award of a V.C.
#Paul beal dictionary of slang manual
War Office) use of the word pillbox was in an engineering manual published by the War Office in 1925. it has long been assumed that the first official (i.e. One last piece of information appeared during the research for this article. A fort may be either a place of resistance, capable of defence or simply a bomb proof barrack, with no real defensive capabilities. However, the connection between the term pill-box and the word `fort` should be noted. This would seem to establish clearly that the relationship of the shape of the pillbox, square, oblong, polygonal and round, is related to the small containers used to carry medicinal pills. The Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology (6) on the other hand suggests “Pillbox…1887, Small, round emplacement for housing a machine gun, etc.” with no other attribution as to the reason for the name. For the genesis of pill-box see Charles Edmonds, A Subaltern`s War.
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the resemblance of their shape to that of an oblong box for holding pills. A small concrete fort: late 1917: Military colloquialism by June 1918. They were garrisoned by….” whilst the Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English (5) prefers “Pill-box. Some of the larger were Quadragular in shape.
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The name, from the shape (often circular in plan and roughly suggesting a ships conning tower) for the German Ferro-concrete small battlefield-redoubts or forts, employed from the autumn of 1917 onwards to defend sections of the line in Flanders. Soldiers` and Sailors` Words and Phrases (4) states “Pillbox. Why “pillbox”?Īlmost all published references agree that it was due to the shape.
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I have not, as yet, found the earlier usage. It is clear that the Oxford English Dictionary is incorrect in asserting that the usage of the word pillbox derived from this article. The reader was expected to understand just what was being reffered to. this casual use of the word indicates quite clearly that it was not the first time that it had been used by the media. The word pill-box (the word was hyphenated until the Second World War) was used twice more in the article, which is also sprinkled with references to `concrete forts`. He tried to send counter-attacking parties out to the ruins of Herenthage Chateau, at the eastern end of the wood (we call it Invernesss Copse, but the German communiques refer to it by its original name, Herenthage Wood), and from the pill-box forts which command it north and south of the Menin Road, but our men beat them back, and endured with grim resolution the constant artillery and machine gun fire poured into their shelters among the shattered trees and flooded shell holes.” (3) This joint tenancy was greatly to the enemy`s disadvantage. Although repeated attempts to take the whole of it failed because of its profusion of machine gun forts and other formidable obstacles, the enemy occupants were unable to dislodge us from the portion won nearly a month ago. “For some days we have firmly held a line through the western portion of the ragged wood. The relevant paragraph in the article reads: It points out that, even though the Germans used hand picked and finely trained Storm Troopers against our `citizen-soldiers` (Sic) (2) they still failed to re-take the wood. This is a typical piece of media reporting of the period, aimed firmly at raising the spirits of the folk back home. In the Scotsman article the first mention of the word is about half way through an article referring to the German use of Bavarian Storm Troopers to capture Inverness Wood, on the Menin Road, at 04:00hrs on the 6th September 1917. Reference is made to several other later sources such as the Daily Mail for 26th February1923. The Oxford English Dictionary (1) states that the first use of the word pill-box was an article in the Scotsman newspaper dated 13th September 1917. But why are they so called: Why “pillbox”? Why not bunker, blockhouse or Sangar? Two points are raised by this: Who used the term first and why choose “pillbox”? In the last few years there has been a growing interest in the small concrete forts known popularly as Pillboxes.