The following glossary explains the meaning of some of the more common trench slang. The structure of the army at the front influenced this, particularly in the close bonds between public-school-educated junior officers and the men, and the mixing of men from different areas after the introduction of conscription in 1916. In August 1918, the Guardian reported on the surprising use of terms such as "wangle it" and "wads of it " in a debate in the House of Commons. Newspapers printed slang glossaries and offered their own suggestions, not often accepted gratefully by troops at the front.īy the end of the war some terms that in 1914 had been regarded as criminal or service slang were being used in middle-class drawing rooms. People discussed language, collected slang, and argued about the origins of words and phrases. T he first world war was a surprisingly fertile period for the English language.
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