liberty cabbage love

liberty cabbage

Definitions

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun US, historical sauerkraut

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

Coined during the First World War as a substitute for the word sauerkraut, which had been borrowed from German around 1600.

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Comments

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  • In WWI, the name of sauerkraut was changed to be more American.

    February 22, 2007

  • And the name of the House of Hanover was changed to Windsor, which is what we still call the royal family today...

    February 22, 2007

  • "States outlawed the teaching of German, while an Iowa politician warned that 'ninety percent of all the men and women who teach the German language are traitors.' Conversations in German on the street or over the telephone became suspicious. Sauerkraut was renamed 'Liberty cabbage.' The Cleveland Plain Dealer stated, 'What the nation demands is that treason, whether thinly veiled or quite unmasked, be stamped out...."

    —John M. Barry, The Great Influenza (NY: Penguin Books, 2004), 124–125

    February 14, 2009