H. L. Mencken

“ These Britishers, in their three years of service, had developed a vast vocabulary of slang, and it stood ready for use. Naturally enough, some of it was borrowed forthwith, though not much. When the main American army followed in 1918 there was little need to make extensive additions to it. Frog, for Frenchman, was entirely satisfactory; why substitute anything else? So was cootie. So was bus. So was Holy Joe, for chaplain. So were blimp, Jack Johnson, whizz-bang, to strafe and pill-box. Whatever was needed further was adapted from the everyday slang of the United States. ”

“ The English army invented not only more war slang than the American, but much more expressive slang. In fact, we took over a number of their words, such as dud, cootie and bus (for aeroplane) . During the first year of [American participation in] the war the Americans had no slang word for German. ”

“ Hard-boiled seems to have originated among the Americans in France. It is one of the few specimens of army slang that shows any sign of surviving in the general speech. The only others that I can think of are cootie, gob, leatherneck, doughboy, frog, and buck-private. Hand-shaker, since the war ended, has resumed its old meaning of an excessively affable man. Top-sergeant, during the war, suffered an interesting philological change, like that already noticed in buncombe. ”