War

Tug-of-war, Cold War, war on terror, World War II, “Make love, not war,” WarGames, War on Poverty, prisoner of war, War of the Worlds, Iraq War, war on drugs, antiwar, “All’s fair in love and war”—these are just a few of the myriad ways that the word “war” is used every day in the English language. It is difficult today to turn on a television, check a news feed, or go to a movie theater anywhere in the United States without encountering a verbal or a visual reference to war. Whether through reports of wars around the globe; declarations of “war on” a variety of social issues, from AIDS to poverty to drugs to crime; or descriptions of sporting events (“throwing a bomb,” “blitzing,” “sudden death”)—references to war permeate US culture. Even when the term “war” itself is not used, its resonant vocabularies are ubiquitous, often creating oppositional structures that disable nuanced and critical thinking about complex issues. Whether in sports, politics, corporate takeovers, relationships, or television ratings, the language of war permeates US culture: battle, conflict, combat, hostility, collateral damage, attack, surgical strike, victory, soldier, enemy, and so on. One of the clearest indications of the pervasiveness of this vocabulary is its commonplace acceptance in everyday usage, with few people even recognizing their references to war in using such terms. The semantic origins of the word—the Indo-European root wers, meaning “to confuse or mix up”—may say more about contemporary usages than anything else.