Invasion

Invasion (pronounced in-vey-zhuhn)

(1) A military action consisting of armed forces of one (usually geopolitical) entity entering territory controlled by another such entity, generally with the objective of conquering territory & altering or overthrowing an established government.

(2) The entrance or advent of anything troublesome or harmful, as disease; the entry without consent of an individual, group or species into an area where they are not wanted.

(3) Entrance as if to take possession or overrun.

(4) Infringement by intrusion.

(5) In pathology, the spread of cancer from its point of origin into surrounding tissues.

(6) In Botany, the movement of plants to a new area or to an area to which they are not native.

(7) In surgery, the breaching of the skin barrier.

1400–1450: From the late Middle English, From the Middle French invasion from the Late Latin invāsiōnem, accusative of invāsiō, from invāsus, past participle of invādō, the construct being in- (in, into) +‎ vādō (I go, rush).  Invāsus was the past participle of invādere + -iōn-.  The noun was from the mid-fifteenth century Middle English invasioun (an assault, attack, act of entering a country or territory as an enemy), from the twelfth century Old French invasion (invasion, attack, assault), from the Late Latin invasionem (nominative invasio) (an attack, invasion), the noun of action from the past-participle stem of invadere (to go, come, or get into; enter violently, penetrate into as an enemy, assail, assault, make an attack on), the construct being in- (in) from the primitive Indo-European root en- (in)) + vadere (to go, to walk, go hastily) from the primitive Indo-European root wadh- (to go) (source also of the Old English wadan (to go) and the Latin vadum (ford).  Of the meanings in the extended senses, of diseases it referred to "a harmful incursion of any kind; with reference to rights etc, it was about "infringement by intrusion, encroachment by entering into or taking away what belongs to another".

The later noun incursion (hostile attack) dates from the early fifteenth century, from the fourteenth century Old French incursion (invasion, attack, assault) or directly from the Latin incursionem (nominative incursio) (a running against, hostile attack), the noun of action from past participle stem of incurrere (run into or against, rush at).  Although in practice often synonymous with invasion, “incursion” is often in a specifically military context used to distinguish a operation which is either a prelude to or a distinct part of an invasion.  It’s a practice of historians rather than a convention of use and is one of a number of words used to describe the mechanics of an invasion including: aggression, assault, breach, infiltration, infringement, intrusion, offensive, onslaught, raid, violation, entrenchment, foray, infraction, inroad, irruption, maraud, offense & transgression.

The (second) Italian invasion of Ethiopia

Italy’s invasion in of Abyssinia (Ethiopia) in 1935 was a curious business.  Conceived by the Duce (Benito Mussolini (1883-1945, prime-minister of Italy 1922-1943) as the means by which his country might acquire a colony of note, a rightful thing he thought denied by the ineptness of previous regimes in Rome and the unfairness of the treaty of Versailles from which Italy had gained so little from the spoils of victory to which she’d made a slight contribution.  In his mind too was the memory of the last Italian adventure in East Africa when in 1896 the Ethiopians had inflicted upon the would-be conquerors from Europe a brutal defeat on the battlefield at Adowa, seared in the memory of the Italian army as the headline “Ten-thousand dead and seventy-two cannon lost”.  Looking first at the map of the old Roman Empire, then the splendid possessions held by Britain and France and finally the few sparse deserts which made up “his” empire, the Duce decided on an African conquest.  Even in 1935 it was seen in other European capitals as an unfashionable venture, the idea of the conquest of other people’s lands no longer the respectable thing to do and there was an increasing awareness that nor was it any longer the profitable thing to do.  Mussolini however was convinced and embarked on what proved to be imperialism’s last great set-piece crusade.

David Low (1981-1963), 1936.

The world of 1935 however was a different place than that of the nineteenth century.  Not only was Ethiopia internationally recognized (including by Italy) as a sovereign, independent state but it was also a member of the League of Nations (1920-1946), the predecessor of the United Nations (UN), formed in an attempt to ensure there could never be another world war, the mechanisms of resolving conflict listed in its covenant. Central to the covenant was collective security and the settling of international disputes through negotiation and arbitration.  The League’s approach did not much commend itself the Mussolini who announced Ethiopia presented a military threat to the neighboring Italian possessions of Eritrea and Italian Somaliland and that anyway his historic destiny was to fulfil a civilizing mission which would “…help Africa to progress from its primitive state.”

David Low, 1936

Obviously the League of Nations could not countenance one of its members invading another and the Britain’s foreign secretary, Sir Samuel Hoare (later Viscount Templewood, 1880–1959; UK Foreign Secretary 1935), making what may have been the finest speech the unfortunate assemble ever heard, declared the UK was wholly committed to the principle of collective security and that acts of unprovoked aggression strenuously would be resisted.  Hoare’s principled stand lasted as long as the next cabinet meeting in London and as quickly it became clear that member nations of the League would not be imposing any economic or diplomatic sanctions which had any substantive effect, let alone threaten a military response, Mussolini invaded.  Able to deploy aircraft, chemical weapons, heavy artillery, tanks and other armored vehicles, the Italians slowly secured victory, culminating in the battle of Amba Aradam, the biggest and bloodiest battle of the imperial era.

David Low, 1936.

By then Hoare had been forced from office by the public outcry over his back-channel deal with the palindromic Pierre Laval (1883–1945, French prime minister 1935-1936 and later executed for his role in the Vichy administration (1940-1944)) which, although in the tradition of the League’s earlier acts of conciliation in the far east, is better remembered as a preview of the later techniques of appeasement which so failed to satisfy Hitler.  What Hoare and Laval had agreed was a deal under which two-thirds of Ethiopia would be ceded to Italy in exchange for the Ethiopians being granted a land-corridor to a nearby port.  Both the belligerents actually anyway rejected the deal and Hoare was the sacrificial scapegoat for a plan which had the cabinet’s support.

The affair revealed the European democracies as divided and the League of Nations as ineffectual and doomed.  Although the League would continue to talk, few now listened as Europe drifted to war and after hostilities began, the organization went into abeyance except for a skeleton administrative structure which ticked-over until the League was dissolved in 1946.  Of the many speeches made after the Italian invasion, the only one still remembered is that made in June 1936 the Emperor Haile Selassie I (1892–1975; Emperor of Ethiopia 1930-1974) in which he condemned the league for its inaction, prophesized war and warned the assembled delegates “It is us today.  It will be you tomorrow.”

War

War (pronounced wawr)

(1) A conflict carried on by force of arms, as between nations or between parties within a nation; warfare, as by land, sea, or air; in the singular, a specific conflict (eg Second Punic War).

(2) A state or period of armed hostility or active military operations.

(3) A contest carried on by force of arms, as in a series of battles or campaigns.

(4) By extension, a descriptor for various forms of non-armed conflict (war on poverty, trade war, war on drugs, war on cancer, war of words etc).

(5) A type of card game played with a 52 card pack.

(6) A battle (archaic).

(7) To conduct a conflict.

(8) In law, the standard abbreviation for warrant (and in England, the county Warwickshire.

Pre 1150: The noun was from the Middle English werre, from the late Old English were, were & wyrre (large-scale military conflict) (which displaced the native Old English ġewinn), from the Old Northern French were & werre (variant of Old French guerre (difficulty, dispute; hostility; fight, combat, war)), from the Medieval Latin werra, from the Frankish werru (confusion; quarrel), from the Old Norse verriworse and was cognate with the Old High German werra (confusion, strife, quarrel), the German verwirren (to confuse), the Old Saxon werran (to confuse, perplex), the Dutch war (confusion, disarray) and the West Frisian war (defense, self-defense, struggle (also confusion).  Root was the primitive Indo-European wers- (to mix up, confuse, beat, perplex) and the Cognates are thought to suggest the original sense was "to bring into a state of confusion”.  The verb was from the Middle English, from the late Old English verb transitive werrien (to make war upon) and was derivative of the noun.  The alternative English form warre was still in use as late as the seventeenth century.

Developments in other European languages including the Old French guerrer and the Old North French werreier.  The Spanish, Portuguese, and Italian guerra also are from the Germanic; why those speaking Romanic tongues turned to the Germanic for a word meaning "war" word is speculative but it may have been to avoid the Latin bellum (from which is derived bellicose) because its form tended to merge with bello- (beautiful).  Interestingly and belying the reputation later gained, there was no common Germanic word for "war" at the dawn of historical times.  Old English had many poetic words for "war" (wig, guð, heaðo, hild, all common in personal names), but the usual one to translate Latin bellum was gewin (struggle, strife (and related to “win”).

Lindsay Lohan making the pages of Foreign Policy (FP), July 2007.  Despite the title, FP’s content is sometimes discursive and popular culture figures can appear.

Foreign Policy (FP) was in 1970 founded by Harvard’s Professor Samuel Huntington (1927-2008) and was always intended to be a clearing house for lively, punchy articles in the field of international relations yet not constrained by formal, academic traditions, exemplified by a magazine like Foreign Affairs, published by the US think-tank the Council on Foreign Relations.  Professor Huntington is best remembered for his “Clash of Civilizations” (CoC, 1993) theory which, noting one of threads in world history of the last 1300-odd years, argued the defining conflict of the future would between Western civilization and the multi-national Islamic world, the old order of wars between nation-states rendered obsolete by changes in technology and geopolitics.  The unusual period at the end of the Cold War (1946-1991) was a time of TLAs (three-letter acronym), the era remembered also for US political scientist Francis Fukuyama’s coining of the “End of History” (EoH, 1992) the thesis being that with Western liberal democracy prevailing over the Soviet communist model, the end-point of humanity’s search of the ideal political and economic systems had been reached and it was that Western liberal democracy which would be the universal form, history in that sense, thus ended.  Unfortunately, since the EoH was declared, wars, if no longer declared, have continued to be waged.

War-time appeared first in the late fourteenth century; the territorial conflicts against Native Americans added several forms including warpath (1775), war-whoop (1761), war-dance (1757), war-song (1757) & war-paint (1826) the last of which came often to be applied to war-mongering (qv) politicians (as in "putting on their war-paint"), a profession which does seem to attract blood-thirsty non-combatants.  War crimes, although widely discussed for generations, were first discussed in the sense of being a particular set of acts which might give rise to specific offences which could be codified in International Law: A Treatise (1906) by LFL Oppenheim (1858–1919).  The war chest dates from 1901 although even then it’s use was certainly almost always figurative; in the distant past there presumably had in treasuries been chests of treasure to pay for armies.  War games, long an essential part of military planning, came to English from the German Kriegspiel, the Prussians most advanced in such matters because the innovative structure of their general staff system.

In English, war is most productive as a modifier, adjective etc and examples include: Types of war: Cold War, holy war, just war, civil war, war of succession, war of attrition, war on terror etc; Actual wars: World War I, Punic Wars, First Gulf War, Korean War, Hundred Years' War, Thirty Years' War, Six-day War etc; Campaigns against various social problems: War on Poverty, War on Drugs, War on cancer; The culture wars: War on Christmas, war on free speech; In commerce: Price wars, Cola Wars, turf war; In crime: turf war (also used in conventional commerce), gang war, Castellammarese War; In technology: Bus wars, operating system wars, browser wars; Various: pre-war, post-war, inter-war, man-o'-war, war cabinet, warhead, warhorse, warlord, war between the sexes, war bond, war reparations, war room.

Film set for the War Room in Dr Strangelove (1964).

Pre-war and post-war need obviously to be used in context; “pre-war” which in the inter-war years almost always meant pre-1914, came after the end of WWII to mean pre-1939 (even in US historiography).  “Post-war” tracked a similar path and now probably means the years immediately after WWII, the era generally thought to have ended (at the latest) in 1973 when the first oil shock ended the long boom.  Given the propensity over the centuries for wars between (tribes, cities, kings, states etc) to flare up from time to time, there have been many inter-war periods but the adjective inter-war didn’t come into wide use until the 1940s when it was used exclusively to describe the period (1918-1939) between the world wars.  The phrase “world war”, although tied to the big, multi-theatre conflicts of the twentieth century, had been used speculatively as early as 1898, then in the context of the US returning the Philippines (then a colonial possession) to Spain, trigging European war into which she might be drawn.  “Word War” (referring to the 1914-1918 conflict which is regarded as being “world-wide” since 1917 when the US entered as a belligerent) was used almost as soon as the war started but “Great War” continued to be the preferred form until 1939 when used of “world war” spiked; World War II came into use even before Russian, US & Japanese involvement in 1941.  For as long as there have been the war-like there’s presumably been the anti-war faction but the adjectival anti-war (also antiwar) came into general use only in 1812, an invention of American English, in reference to opposition to the War of 1812, the use extending by 1821 to describe a position of political pacifism which opposed all war.  War-monger (and warmonger) seems first to have appeared in Edmund Spenser’s (circa 1552-1599) Faerie Queene (1590) although it’s possible it may have prior currency.  The warhead was from 1989, used by engineers to describe the "explosive part of a torpedo", the use later transferred during the 1940s to missiles.  The warhorse, attested from the 1650s, was a "powerful horse ridden into war", one selected for strength and spirit and the figurative sense of "seasoned veteran" of anything dates from 1837.  The (quasi-offensive though vaguely admiring) reference to women perceived as tough was noted in 1921.

Man-o'-war (also as man-of-war) was an old form meaning "fighting man, soldier" while the meaning "armed ship, vessel equipped for warfare" was from the late fifteenth century and was one of the primary warships of early-modern navies, the sea creature known as the Portuguese man-of-war (1707) so called for its sail-like crest.  The more common form was “man o' war”.  The Cold War may have started as early as 1946 but certainly existed from some time in 1947-1948; it was a form of "non-hostile belligerency” (although the death–toll in proxy-wars fought for decades on its margins was considerable);  it seems first to have appeared in print in October 1945 in a piece by George Orwell (1903—1950).  The companion phrase “hot war” is actually just a synonym for “war” and makes sense only if used in conjunction with “cold war”.  The cold war was memorably defined by Lord Cherwell (Professor Frederick Lindemann, 1886–1957) as “two sides for years counting their missiles”.

On June 6, 2025, Friedrich Merz (b 1955, German chancellor since 2025) visited the White House.  He mentioned the war!  Donald Trump (b 1946; US president 2017-2021 and since 2025) would have been pleased by that because his aides would repeatedly have told him: “Don’t mention the war!”

The chancellor’s reference was to “D-Day”, the Allied amphibious invasion of France on 6 June, 1944 and coincidently, the chancellor was born 11 November 1955, 37 years to the day after the signing of the armistice which ended World War I (1914-1918); the eleventh of November is now marked as “Remembrance Day” in the Commonwealth and “Veterans Day” in the US.  The D-Day invasion was the Allies biggest single combined operation of World War II (1939-1945) and remains the largest triphibious invasion in the history of warfare.  The portmanteau adjective triphibious was a blend of tri-(three) +‎ (am)phibious and referred to the combined use of air, naval and ground forces.  The tri- prefix was from the Latin tri- (three) and the Ancient Greek τρι- (tri-) (three) while amphibious was from the Ancient Greek ἀμφίβιος (amphíbios), the construct being ἀμφί (amphí) (in this context “about, concerning”) + βίος (bíos) (life).  Military historians like triphibious but not all etymologists approve.

A civil war (battles among fellow citizens or within a community (as opposed to between tribes, cities, nations etc)) is civil in the sense of "occurring among fellow citizens" and the term dates from the fourteenth century batayle ciuile (civil battle), the exact phrase “civil war” attested from late fifteenth century in the Latin bella civicus.  In Ancient Rome, the rather nasty squabbles between the Optimates and the Senate Elites were known as bellum civile but should in English be understood as “governance war” because what was being described was a factional power-struggle for the control of Rome rather than a “civil war” as it is now understood.  The instances of what would now be called civil war pre-date antiquity but the early references typically were in reference to ancient Rome where the conflicts were, if not more frequent, certainly better documented.  A word for the type of conflict in the Old English was ingewinn and in Ancient Greek it had been polemos epidemios.

The struggle in England between the parliament and Charles I (1600-1649) has always and correctly been known as the English Civil War (1642-1651) whereas there are scholars who insist the US Civil War (1861-1865) should rightly be called the “War of Secession”, the “war between the States" or the “Federal-Confederate War”.  None of the alternatives ever managed great traction and “US Civil War” has long been the accepted form although, when memories were still raw, if there was ever a disagreement, the parties seem inevitability to have settled on “the War”.  The phrases pre-war and post-war are never applied the US Civil War, the equivalents being the Latin forms ante-bellum (literally “before the war”) and post-bellum (literally “after the war”).  The word “civil” of course is used in other ways and there has rarely be much that in another sense is “civil” about civil wars so when fought in what is thought to be in accordance with the “rules of war”, phrases like “chivalrous war” or “clean war” tend to be used although however fought, wars are a ghastly business are there are simply degrees of awfulness.

Colonel Nasser, president of Egypt, Republic Square, Cairo, 22 February 1958.

During the centuries when rules were rare, wars were not but there was little discussion about whether or not a war was happening.  There would be debates about the wisdom of going to war or the strategy adopted but whether or not it was a war was obvious to all.  That changed after the Second World War when the charter of the United Nations was agreed to attempt to ensure force would never again be used as a means of resolving disputes between nations.  That's obviously not been a success but the implications of the charter have certainly affected the language of conflict, much now hanging on whether an event is war or something else which merely looks like war.  An early example of the linguistic lengths to which those waging war (a thing of which they would have boasted) would go, in the post-charter world, to deny they were at war happened after British, French and Israeli forces in 1956 invaded Egypt in response to Colonel Gamal Nasser's (1918–1970; president of Egypt 1954-1970) nationalization of foreign-owned Suez Canal Company.  The invasion was a military success but it soon became apparent that Israel, France and Britain were, by any standards, waging an aggressive war and had conspired, ineptly, to make it appear something else.  The United States threatened sanctions against Britain & France and the invading forces withdrew.  There's always been the suspicion that in the wake of this split in the Western Alliance, the USSR seized the opportunity to intervene in Hungary which was threatening to become a renegade province.

Suez Canal, 1956.

In the House of Commons (Hansard: 1 November 1956 (vol 558 cc1631-7441631)), the prime minister (Anthony Eden, 1897–1977, UK prime-minister 1955-1957) was asked to justify how what appeared to be both an invasion and an act of aggressive war could be in conformity with the Charter of the United Nations.  Just to jog the prime-minister's memory of the charter, the words he delivered at the UN's foundation conference in San Francisco in 1945 were read out: “At intervals in history mankind has sought by the creation of international machinery to solve disputes between nations by agreement and not by force.”  In reply, Mr Eden assured the house there had been "...no declaration of war by us.", a situation he noted prevailed for the whole of the Korean War and while there was in Egypt clearly "...a state of armed conflict...", just as in Korea, "...there was no declaration of war.  It was never admitted that there was a state of war, and Korea was never a war in any technical or legal sense, nor are we at war with Egypt now."

Quite how the comparison with Korea, a police action under the auspices of the UN and authorized by the Security Council (the USSR was boycotting the place at the time) was relevant escaped many of the prime-minister's critics.  The UK had issued an ultimatum to Egypt regarding the canal which contained conditions as to time and other things; the time expired and the conditions were not accepted.  It was then clear in international law that in those circumstances the country which delivers the ultimatum is not entitled to carry on hostilities without a declaration of war so the question was what legal justification was there for an invasion?  The distinction between a “state of war" and a "state of armed conflict", whatever its relevance to certain technical matters, seemed not to matter in the fundamental question of the lawfulness of the invasion under international law.  Mr Eden continued to provide many answers but none to that question.

The aversion to declaring war continues to this day, the United States, hardly militarily inactive during the last eight-odd decades, last declared war in 1942 (against Italy, Hungary, Bulgaria & Romania, the latter three apparently at the insistence of the state department which identified certain legal technicalities).  There seems no an aversion even to the word, the UK not having had a secretary of state (minister) for war since 1964 and the US becoming (nominally) pacifist even earlier, the last secretary of war serving in 1947; the more UN-friendly “defense” the preferred word on both sides of the Atlantic.  In the Kremlin, Mr Putin (b 1952; prime-minister or president of Russia since 1999) seems also have come not to like the word.  While apparently sanguine at organizing “states of armed conflict”, he’s as reluctant as Mr Eden to hear his “special military operations” described as “invasions” or “wars” and in a recent legal flourish, arranged the passage of a law which made “mentioning the war” unlawful.

Not mentioning the war (special military operation): Mr Putin.

The bill which the Duma (lower house of parliament) & Federation Council (upper house) passed, and the president rapidly signed into law, provided for fines or imprisonment for up to fifteen years in the Gulag for intentionally spreading “fake news” or “discrediting the armed forces”, something which includes labelling the “special military operation” in Ukraine as a “war” or “invasion”.  Presumably, given the circumstances, the action could be described as a “state of armed conflict” and even Mr Putin seems to have stopped calling it a “peacekeeping operation”; he may have thought the irony too subtle for the audience.  Those who post or publish anything on the matter will be choosing their words with great care so as not to mention the war.

However, although Mr Putin may not like using the word “war”, there’s much to suggest he’s a devotee of the to the most famous (he coined a few) aphorism of Prussian general & military theorist Carl von Clausewitz (1780–1831): “War is the continuation of policy with other means.”  The view has many adherents and while some acknowledge its cynical potency with a weary regret, for others it has been a world view to pursue with relish.  In the prison diary assembled from the huge volume of fragments he had smuggled out of Spandau prison while serving the twenty year sentence he was lucky to receive for war crimes & crimes against humanity (Spandauer Tagebücher (Spandau, the Secret Diaries), pp 451 William Collins Inc, 1976), Albert Speer (1905–1981; Nazi court architect 1934-1942; Nazi minister of armaments and war production 1942-1945) recounted one of Adolf Hitler’s (1889-1945; Führer (leader) and German head of government 1933-1945 & head of state 1934-1945) not infrequent monologues and the enthusiastic concurrence by the sycophantic Joachim von Ribbentrop (1893–1946; Nazi foreign minister 1938-1945):

"In the summer of 1939, On the terrace of the Berghof [Hitler’s alpine retreat], Hitler was pacing back and forth with one of his military adjutants. The other guests respectfully withdrew to the glassed-in veranda.  But in the midst of an animated lecture he was giving to the adjutant, Hitler called to us to join him on the terrace. “They should have listened to Moltke and struck at once” he said, resuming the thread of his thought, “as soon as France recovered her strength after the defeat in 1871.  Or else in 1898 and 1899.  America was at war with Spain, the French were fighting the English at Fashoda and were at odds with them over the Sudan, and England was having her problems with the Boers in South Africa, so that she would soon have to send her army in there.  And what a constellation there was in 1905 also, when Russia was beaten by Japan.   The rear in the East no threat, France and England on good terms, it is true, but without Russia no match for the Reich militarily. It’s an old principle: He who seizes the initiative in war has won more than a battle.  And after all, there was a war on!”  Seeing our stunned expressions, Hitler threw in almost irritably: “There is always a war on. The Kaiser [Wilhelm II (1859–1941; German Emperor & King of Prussia 1888-1918)] hesitated too long."

Such epigrams usually transported Ribbentrop into a state of high excitement.  At these moments it was easy to see that he alone among us thought he was tracking down, along with Hitler, the innermost secrets of political action.  This time, too, he expressed his agreement with Hitler with that characteristic compound of subservience and the hauteur of an experienced traveller whose knowledge of foreign ways still made an impression on Hitler.  Ribbentrop’s guilt, that is, did not consist in his having made a policy of war on his own. Rather, he was to blame for using his authority as a supposed cosmopolite to corroborate Hider’s provincial ideas. The war itself was first and last Hitler’s idea and work.  “That is exactly what neither the Kaiser nor the Kaiser’s politicians ever really understood,” Ribbentrop was loudly explaining to everyone.  “There’s always a war on. The difference is only whether the guns are firing or not.  There’s war in peacetime too. Anyone who has not realized that cannot make foreign policy.”

Hider threw his foreign minister a look of something close to gratitude.  “Yes, Ribbentrop,” he said, “yes!"  He was visibly moved by having someone in this group who really understood him. “When the time comes that I am no longer here, people must keep that in mind.  Absolutely.”  And then, as though carried away by his insight into the nature of the historical process, he went on: “Whoever succeeds me must be sure to have an opening for a new war.  We never want a static situation where that sort of thing hangs in doubt In future peace treaties we must therefore always leave open a few questions that will provide a pretext.  Think of Rome and Carthage, for instance. A new war was always built right into every peace treaty. That's Rome for you! That's statesmanship.”

Pleased with himself, Hitler twisted from side to side, looking challengingly around the attentive, respectful circle.  He was obviously enjoying the vision of himself beside the statesmen of ancient Rome.  When he occasionally compared Ribbentrop with Bismarck—a comparison I myself sometimes heard him make—he was implying that he himself soared high above the level of bourgeois nationalistic policy.  He saw himself in the dimensions of world history. And so did we.  We went to the veranda.  Abruptly, as was his way, he began talking about something altogether banal."

Sabre

Sabre (pronounced sey-ber)

(1) A stout single-edged cavalry sword, having a curved blade.

(2) A sword used in fencing, having a narrow V-shaped blade, a semicircular guard, and a slightly curved hand.

(3) In historic military slang, a cavalry soldier.

(4) To injure or kill with a sabre.

1670s: From the French sabre (heavy, curved sword), an alteration of sable (dating from the 1630s), from the 1630s German dialectal Sabel & Säbel, from the Middle High German sebel, probably from the perhaps from the fourteenth century Hungarian (Magyar) szabla (rendered laser as száblya) (saber, literally "tool to cut with" from szabni (to cut) and it’s thought the spread of the Hungarian word to neighboring languages occurred during the Ottoman wars in Europe of the fifteenth to seventeenth centuries.  The origin of the Hungarian word is mysterious.  It was long thought most likely from the South Slavic (the Serbo-Croatian сабља or the Common Slavic sablja) which would mean the ultimate source is Turkic but more recent scholarship suggests it may ultimately be from the Tungusic, via the Kipchak Turkic selebe, with later metathesis (the letters transposing l-b to b-l) and apocope changed to seble, which would have changed its vocalization in Hungarian to the recorded sabla (perhaps under the influence of the Hungarian word szab- (to crop; cut (into shape).  It was cognate with the Danish sabel, the Russian са́бля (sáblja) and the Serbo-Croatian сабља.  The Balto-Slavic words (Russian sablya, Polish and Lithuanian šoblė) may have come via German, but the Italian sciabla is said to have been derived directly from Hungarian.  The US spelling since the late nineteenth century was saber but sabre is also often used by those who prefer the traditional spellings for archaic nouns (eg theatre is in learned use sometimes used to distinguish live high-culture performances from popular forms).  Sabre is a noun and verb and the (omninous sounding) sabring & sabred are verbs; the noun plural is sabres.

Sabrage is the opening of a bottle, traditionally champagne, by striking with a sabre, the annulus (the donut-shape ring of glass between the neck and cork) of the bottle, held at an angle of about 30^o, slicing off the bottle's neck.  The trick is said to be to ensure the bottle is as cold as possible and the practice is claimed to be safe, any shards of glass being propelled away under pressure. For those for whom a sabre might not conveniently fall to hand, another heavy-blade can be used, even a meat-cleaver.  The sabre-tooth tiger, dating from 1849, is but one of a species of saber toothed cats from the genus Smilodon, noted for the pair of elongated teeth in the upper jaw although “sabre-tooth tiger” is often incorrectly used to describe all of the type, correctly known as saber-tooth cats and them a subset of a number of extinct groups of predatory therapsids with the famous teeth.  Saber-toothed mammals roamed the planet for over forty-million years until driven to extinction, presumably by modern humans, towards the end last period of glacial expansion during the ice age, an epoch which, by one definition, remains on-going.

Although some sources maintain “saber-rattling” (ostentatious or threatening display of military power; implied threat of imminent military attack; militarism) is derived from certain interactions between civilian government and the military in South American in 1924, the phrase had been in the English newspapers as early as 1879, spreading across the Atlantic early in the next century.  However, even before “saber-rattling” emerged as such an enticingly belligerent semantic mélange, the elements were often in close proximity usually as “the rattling of sabres”, used to describe the clatter a sabre in its scabbard is wont to make as its wearer proceeds on foot or horseback.  The use dates from a time when in many a European city a sword-carrying soldier was not an uncommon sight and bother phrases are used to describe bellicose posturing but only “sabre rattling” is exclusive in this sense.  It’s the sound which matters rather than the particular bladed weapon; the phrase “mere sword rattling” is attested in a US publication in 1882 and, strictly speaking, the use of naval forces in a threatening manner should presumably be “cutlass rattling” but that never caught on.  The figurative use could presumably exist in just about any dispute but seems most documented when threatening legal proceedings, often in cases of alleged defamation.

The strong association of sabre rattling with events in Chile in 1924 has led some to suppose the phrase dates from this time and place; that’s not so but what happened in Santiago was one of the few occasions when the sabers were literally rattled.  It was a time of heightened political conflict between the government and one of the few laws which seemed likely to proceed was a pay-rise for the politicians.  This wasn’t received well by most of the population, including the army officers who had long be denied any increase in their salaries.  Accordingly, several dozen officers, mostly subalterns, attended the congressional session at which the politician’s pay was listed for discussion, sitting in the public gallery.  Among the politicians, their presence caused some disquiet and the president of the chamber, noting the air of quiet intimidation, ordered the public gallery cleared, as the discussion was to be secret.  As the officers departed, they rattled the scabbards (chapes) against the floor, interpreted as a threat of military intervention.  The fears were not unfounded and by September that year, a military Junta had been established to rule the country and not until 1932 would it relinquish power to a civilian government.

Sabre rattling and Mr Putin.

As a set-piece of sabre-rattling, the Kremlin’s deployment of around eight army divisions to the Ukraine border and six amphibious ships with a supporting flotilla to the Black Sea, is the loudest heard since the end of the Cold War yet it has the curiously nineteenth century feel of those old stand-offs between two colonial powers, squabbling over some patch of desert somewhere, building seemingly towards a war which never quite happened.  Perhaps the true state of tension was revealed by a statement a German military spokesperson: “We are ready to go”, the Luftwaffe remarked of their deployment of three Eurofighter aircraft.

Still, few know Mr Putin’s (Vladimir Putin, b 1952; leader of Russia as president or prime-minister since 1999) thoughts on how the crisis should be encouraged to unfold although the Western political establishment is making sure the possibilities are spelled out.  The US president has his motives for doing this as does the British prime-minister and, to be fair, there is some overlap and imaginative suggestions have included the trick the Nazis in 1939 used to trigger Fall Weiss (plan white), the invasion of Poland, Germany staging a fake “attack” by the Poles, complete with German “victims”, the corpses conveniently available from the nearby concentration camps.  Quite whether there are many well-informed politicians who actually believe Russian armored divisions will be unleashed across the Ukrainian border isn’t clear but the alacrity with which many have been beating a path to Mr Putin’s door (or screen), certainly suggests they've reacted well to a growing crisis, the Russian president, in a nice touch, conducting some of the meetings in Saint Petersburg's Mariinsky Palace, the last neoclassical Imperial pile built by the Tsars.  Thought pragmatic rather than romantic, conventional wisdom would suggest Mr Putin will be not much be attracted to a massed invasion, even one with a bit of pretext, but the rebel regions in the east are attractive building blocks for the construction of a land bridge to the already annexed Crimean peninsular and from there, it's not that far to Odesa and the tantalizing prospect of sealing off Ukraine from the Black Sea, a more with critical economic and strategic implications.  Political recognition would be a handy prelude and one likely to provoke only a manageable reaction, the West probably as enthusiastic about sanctions which might be self-harming as they were in 1935 when League of Nations tried to do something about Italy's invasion of Abyssinia and it may be when things settle down a bit and the sabre rattling subsides, the Kremlin's strategy will remain the same but the tactical emphasis will switch.  As thinkers of such diverse subtlety as the wickedly clever Talleyrand (Charles-Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord, 1754–1838; French diplomat whose career lasted from Louis XVI to Louis-Philippe) and the slow-witted Joachim von Ribbentrop (1893–1946; Nazi foreign minister 1938-1945) understood, between some states there's always a war going on; sometimes with guns and bombs, sometimes by other means and there are more "other means" than once there were.  Still the concerns about an invasion (which presumably would be styled a "state of armed conflict" rather than a "war") are not unfounded and the recent success of the Russian military in the Crimea and Belarus are probably as encouraging as the subdued Western reaction to these adventures.  How "prompt, resolute and effective" would be the response to invasion by the Ukrainians is the subject of speculation in many capitals, the professional military opinion seemingly that if the pattern of battle is an old-style contest of artillery and armor (Battle of Kursk) then the advantage will lie with the attacker but if fought street by street (Battle of Stalingrad), with the defenders.

Advanced in technology have meant that most uses of the phrase “sabre rattling” are now figurative and even when used in the context of the threat of armed force, “sabre” is acting not literally but as a synecdoche for “military power”.  Other figurative use can be more remote still, including the threat of litigation.  Although her dabbling in cryptocurrency markets would later attract the interest of US regulators, it’s believed Lindsay Lohan's name has been mentioned only once during the hearings conducted by the US Senate’s Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee and that was in October 2017.  During that hearing, Senator John Kennedy (b 1951; junior senator from Louisiana (Republican) since 2017), searching for a phrase to illustrate the inappropriateness of a US$7.25 million IRA (Internal Revenue Service) for identity verification services being awarded to a Equifax (a company which had just suffered a massive hack resulting in the release of sensitive data belonging to 145 million people), settled on it being akin to “giving Lindsay Lohan the keys to the mini-bar.”  Richard Smith (b circa 1961; chairman and chief executive officer of Equifax 2005-2017), after pausing to digest the analogy, replied to the senator: "I understand you point."

Quickly, Lindsay Lohan’s parents declared the comment an “inappropriate, slanderous and unwarranted” and indicated they were seeking legal advice, labelling the senator “unprofessional”.  Whether the pair were serious wasn’t clear but their legal sabre rattling was said by experts to be an “empty threat” because (1) the protection available under the first amendment (free speech) to the US Constitution, (2) the immunity enjoyed by senators during committee hearings and (3) Ms Lohan being a living adult of full mental capacity, her parents would not enjoy the legal standing to litigate on her behalf.  Ms Lohan didn’t comment on the matter and no legal proceedings were filed.  

Replica of 1796 British light cavalry saber with steel scabbard.

The saber gained fame as a cavalry sword, having a slightly curved blade with a sharp edge, ideal for slashing from horseback.  They were first employed in the early sixteenth century by the hussars, a crack cavalry formation from Hungary and so obvious was their efficiency in the charge or the melee they quickly were adopted by armies throughout Europe.  Union and Confederate cavalries carried sabers during the US Civil War (1861-1865) although, with the advent of heavy artillery and rapid-fire weapons (including the limited use of the 600 rounds per minute (rpm) Gatling gun, while still deadly, they were no longer often a decisive battlefield weapon.  The glamour however lingered and sabres remain part of many full-dress military uniforms worn on ceremonial occasions.

North American F-86 Sabre.

Built between 1948-1957, the North American F-86 Sabre was the first US, swept-wing, transonic jet fighter aircraft.  A revision of a wartime jet-fighter programme and much influenced by the German air-frames and technical material which fell into US hands at the end of World War II, the Sabre was first used in combat after being rushed to the Far East to counter the threat posed by the sudden appearance of Soviet-built MiG-15s (NATO reporting name: Fagot) in the skies.  The Sabre was outstanding success in the Korean War (1950-1953), credited with nearly eight-hundred confirmed kills for little more than a hundred losses and the pedigree attracted the interest of many militaries, the Sabre serving in more than two dozen air-forces, the last aircraft not retired from front-line service until 1997.  Capable beyond its original specification (it could attain supersonic speed in a shallow dive), it was upgraded throughout its production with modern radar and other avionics and there was even a naval version called the FJ-3M Fury, optimized for carrier operations.  One footnote the Sabre contributed to feminist history came in 18 May 1953 when Jacqueline Cochran (1906-1980) became the first woman to break the sound barrier, accomplished in a Canadair F-86E.  The combined Sabre and Fury production numbered nearly ten-thousand, including 112 built under licence by the Commonwealth Aircraft Corporation in Australia.  It was replaced by the F-100D Super Sabre.

The big Sabre

Napier Sabre H-24.

The Napier Sabre was a H-24 cylinder, liquid-cooled, aero engine, designed & developed by the British manufacturer Napier before, during and after World War II.  Although there were many teething problems, later versions evolved to become one of the most powerful piston aero-engines, rated at up to 2,400 horsepower (1,800 kW) while prototypes with advanced supercharger designs yielded in excess of 3,500 horsepower (2,600 kW).  The H-24 configuration (essentially two flat-12s one atop the other and geared together) was chosen because it offered the chance to increase the cylinder count without the excessive length a V-16 or V-24 would entail and, combined with the combination of a short stroke and big bore, permitted high engine speeds, thereby yielding more power without the need greatly to increase displacement and this was vindicated in early testing, the Napier Sabre in 1938 generating 2,400 horsepower (1,800 kW) with a 2,238 cubic inch (37 litre) capacity whereas the early Rolls-Royce Merlin V12 produced just over 1,000 horsepower (750 kW) from a 1,647 cubic inch (27 litre) displacement.

1945 Hawker Tempest powered by Napier Sabre H-24.

Problems however soon emerged, related mostly to quality control in the hurried development and manufacturing processes of wartime and inadequacies in the metallurgy used in the complex cylinder liners required by the sleeve valves.  Once these issues were solved, the Napier Sabre proved an outstanding power-plant, powering the Typhoon, the definitive British ground-attack fighter of the war.  Development continued even after the problems had been solved with the intention of using a redesigned supercharged to produce an engine which could power a high-altitude interceptor but the days of the big piston-engined fighters was drawing to a close as the jet age dawned.  Physics also intervened, whatever power a piston engine could generate, the need to use a spinning propeller for propulsion was a limiting factor in performance; above a certain speed, a propeller is simply torn off.

The little sabre

The short stature of Victor Emmanuel III (1869–1947; King of Italy 1900-1946) with: (left to right), Aimone of Savoy, King of Croatia (Rome, 1943), Albert I, King of the Belgians (France, 1915), his wife, Princess Elena of Montenegro (Rome 1937) & Adolf Hitler (1889-1945; Führer (leader) and German head of government 1933-1945 & head of state 1934-1945), observing navy manoeuvres (Gulf of Naples, 1938).  Note his sometimes DPRKesque hats.

Technically, Victor Emmanuel didn’t fit the definition of dwarfism which sets a threshold of adult height at 4 feet 10 inches (1.47 m), the king about 2 inches (50 mm) taller (or less short) and it’s thought the inbreeding not uncommon among European royalty might have been a factor, both his parents and grandparents being first cousins.  However, although not technically a dwarf, that didn’t stop his detractors in Italy’s fascist government calling him (behind his back) il nano (the dwarf), a habit soon picked up the Nazis as der Zwerg (the dwarf) (although Hermann Göring was said to have preferred der Pygmäe (the pygmy)).  In court circles he was know also, apparently affectionately as la piccola sciabola (the little sabre) a nickname actually literal in origin because the royal swordsmith had to forge a ceremonial sabre with an unusually short blade for the diminutive sovereign to wear with his many military uniforms.  His French-speaking Montenegrin wife stood a statuesque six feet (1.8 m) tall and always called him mon petit roi (my little king).  It was a long and happy marriage and genetically helpful too, his son and successor (who enjoyed only a brief reign) very much taller although his was to be a tortured existence.  Still, in his unhappiness he stood tall and that would have been appreciated by the late Duke of Edinburgh who initially approved of the marriage of Lady Diana Spencer (1960-1997) to the Prince of Wales (b 1948) on the basis that she “would breed some height into the line”.

From Sabre to Sabra

The early (left) and later (right) frontal styling of the Reliant Sabre.  The catfishesque look recalled the last of the Packards (1958) and the Daimler SP250 (1959-1964) but was revised in 1962, the update conceptually similar to that used by both MG (for the MGB GT (1965-1980)) and Triumph (for the Spitfire-based GT6 (1966-1973)) to render roadsters as hatchback coupés).  With the facelift, the bizarre and rather lethal looking dagmars were retired.

The origins of the Reliant Sabre (1961-1964) were typical of many English sports which emerged during the 1940s & 1960s as designers with alacrity began to exploit the possibilities offered by fibreglass, a material which had first been used at scale for larger structures during World War II (1939-1945).  The Sabre was thus the marriage of a chassis from one manufacture with the body of another; that’s how things sometimes were done at a time when there were few design rules or safety regulations with which to conform.  The era produced a few successes and many failures, the attraction being with only small amounts of capital, what would now be called “start-ups” could embark on small-volume production of cars which could be shown at motor shows alongside Aston Martins and Ferraris.

Reliant, a Stafford-based niche manufacturer since the 1930s, were contracted to handle the production and in the normal manner such things were then done, the parts-bins from many places (not all automotive) provided components from engines & transmission to door handles.  As a roadster, the Sabre was launched in 1961 and while on paper the specification was attractive, it had many of the crudities and foibles which afflicted many low-volume products and it was slightly more expensive than the more refined, better equipped MGA and later MGB.  Taking a traditional approach to the problem, Reliant in 1962 released the Sabre Six, fitted with the Ford Zephyr's 2.6 litre (156 cubic inch) straight-six in place of the 1.7 litre (104 cubic inch) four.  That resolved any performance deficit and the new car was as fast as anything in its price bracket but it remained in many ways crude and sales were always sluggish; of the 77 produced, all but two were coupés.

1963 Autocars Sabra Sport GT advertisement with corporate tsabár logo.  Note the woman driver, something then done quite selectively in advertising in the West.

So the Sabre was a failure but the chassis was fundamentally sound and it was used as the basis for the Scimitar coupé, a better developed vehicle with enough appeal to remain available until 1970 but it was as a shooting brake, released in 1968 the car found great success, available in a number of versions until 1986.  A quirkier second life for the Sabre however came in Israel where in 1961 it entered production as the Autocars Sabra (Autocars the the operation behind the Reliant version).  Sabra was from the Hebrew צַבָּר (tsabár) (prickly pear cactus), the word re-purposed in the Modern Hebrew created after the creation of the state to mean “a Jewish person born in Israel”.  In this context, sabra predated the establishment of the Jewish state (1948) and use was widespread during the British mandate for Palestine (1922-1948).  Etymologists tracing the history suggest it was used originally as a derogatory term, those from recent waves of immigration thought “rough and lacked social polish” but by the 1950s, it had become positive, the new settlers lauded as being like the prickly pear: “tough on the outside, sweet under the skin”.  For Autocars, the emphasis was on the “born in Israel” aspect, a bit of a leap considering the international origin of the design and much of the componentry but Autocars (founded in 1957), was at the time the country’s only manufacturer of passenger vehicles so it was something to emphasize.  The Sabra's association of the cactus with such people was intended to be suggest something positive and the tsabár (in the botanical sense) also provided the inspiration for the green on yellow corporate logo.