srshea -> RE: Axis of Evil Comedy (Jan. 29 2009 14:53:36)
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Yeah, I had heard it in context of WWII before, ("Axis" Forces), but I always assumed it to be one of those many WWII "code" words and not really everyday English. Yeah, there’s an interesting question in there, and a bit of a chicken/egg one, too. I don’t really know if the usage was obscure but already in place, or if the usage originates from “axis” being used in that WW2 context and then carrying on from there…. This reminds me of a word that’s very rarely used in English and always jumps out at me when I see it: “putsch”, the German word for coup d’etat. This is way over my head, etymologically, but so far as I know the usage of putsch in American English is inextricably, and almost exclusively, linked to its reference to the Munich Beer Hall Putsch. I really don’t know that it’s ever had a common usage outside of that context, and at any rate it’s definitely much less common that “coup” which is pretty standard. Anytime I’ve seen this word used in a more general, non-Beer Hall, context, there’s always been some kind of ideological underpinning to it. I was once paging through a general American history written by a guy with conservative-leaning views, scanning the book, trying to find various controversial episodes in American history to see what sort of slant he put on his interpretation of certain events. The scanning came to a screeching halt when I saw a reference to the (impending, but ultimately unnecessary) impeachment of Richard Nixon as an attempted “putsch”! Takes a pretty “healthy” imagination to conflate the impeachment of Nixon with Hitler’s first, armed attempt at seizing power in Germany!
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