A year ago I celebrated here the centennial of words coined in 1916. So now let’s do the same for words believed to have originated in 1917. Again I am using as my source There’s a Word for It by Sol Steinmetz.
The Great War in Europe was still raging, so some of the new words most likely sprang from that. I am thinking of airdrome, ammo, camouflage, enlistee, machine-gun, storm-troops and tailspin. Other words like Aussie, careerist, cootie, Doberman pinscher and takeover might also be war-related.
The Russian Revolution gave the English language a number of new words at this time: Bolshevism, Bolshevist, Leninist, Red Guard and Soviet.
New music of that generation produced such words as boogie, jazzbo and jazz up.
Increasing automobile traffic was probably responsible for jaywalker. The automobile may have had something to do with the words chauffeur, machinable, part-work, sideswipe, stainless steel and trade-in.
This was also the year that gave us ball hawk, blotto, chowhound, conk, earful, egg foo yung, emote, filthy, G-man, goofus, hokum, moronic, narcissist, package (used as a verb), pep pill, persona, pinpoint, Pollyanna, psych, soft-focus and even Technicolor.
It was quite a year for new words. Most of these I’ve mentioned remain in common usage.
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