WWI Vocab Terms

Question 1

Armistice

Answer 1

The cessations of all hostilities prior to the beginning of official peace negotiations.

Question 2

Atrocity

Answer 2

Any horrible and violent action taken against an innocent or unarmed person or group

Question 3

Attrition

Answer 3

The act of weakening or exhausting by constant harassment, abuse or attack

Question 4

Big Bertha

Answer 4

The name given by the allies to the German 420-mm artillery that could shoot a one-ton shell 9 miles

Question 5

Collective indiscipline

Answer 5

Refusal to take orders by military units; objections not to the war, but to the way it was conducted.

Question 6

Daylight savings time

Answer 6

Time change invented by the British during the war to help save on coal burning so that more coal could converted from home use to war use

Question 7

Doughboys

Answer 7

Name given to the American soldiers. Most likely origin of this nickname is from the large brass buttons on the uniforms of the Union soldiers during the American Civil War that looked like dumplings or “dough boys”

Question 8

Dreadnought

Answer 8

Class of super battleships introduced by Britain in 1906.

Question 9

Hanging on the wire

Answer 9

Slang for dead; also “gone west” and “bought the farm”

Question 10

Kaiser

Answer 10

German for “Caesar” or “Emperor”

Question 11

Land ships

Answer 11

Original name given to tanks.

Question 12

Liquid fire

Answer 12

Original name given to flames shot from flame throwers. Introduced by Germans at Verdun in 1916

Question 13

Mobilization

Answer 13

All the activities associated with prepping the armed forces of a nation to go to war

Question 14

National self-determination

Answer 14

The policy of allowing people’s to determine their own form of government and national boundaries; the nations so created should be sovereign ones, independent of all controls by another nation

Question 15

Over the top

Answer 15

An expression referring to climbing out of a trench or over the front edge of the trench to begin moving across no mans land

Question 16

Paris gun

Answer 16

An artillery capable of firing shells 75 miles, but not as accurate as Big Bertha; so named because it was first used to shell Paris

Question 17

Propaganda

Answer 17

Ideas and messages created to promote a cause or to damage an opposing cause and to persuade people to think in a particular way or to take particular actions

Question 18

Race to the sea

Answer 18

Name given to the continuous series of flanking movements by Germans and British in October and November 1914; resulted in a continuous line of trenches from the Marne to the English Channel

Question 19

Stick bombs

Answer 19

a hand grenade attached to the end of a special wooden handle or “stick”

Question 20

Tsar

Answer 20

Russian for “Caesar” or “emperor”

Question 21

U-Boat

Answer 21

Short for unterseeboot, the German name for submarine

Question 22

Wastage

Answer 22

Term for the daily deaths and other casualties in military units, whether or not in battle