2. POVERTY
• Due to the wall street crash in 1929 the 30s were a time of
economic depression.
• New language was developed to explain these situations
i.e. ‘hyperinflation’ and ‘hoovervilles’ – a name for shanty
towns built by the homeless in the Great Depression.
• Mass unemployment and homelessness caused 1/4 of the
population to be at, or below subsistance level.
3. GERMAN INFLUENCE
• Adolf Hitler started his dictatorship in Germany in
1933.
• When the Nazi’s aggressive foreign policy breaks
the treaty of Versailles the people of Britain
became more aware of the Nazi movement and
so words like ‘Fuhrer’ ‘Gestapo’ and ‘Aryan’
would be filtered into the English language as a
way of talking about foreign affairs.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aGfiV8n_eBY
4. WAR
• 2nd world war broke out 1939
• People of Britain had to be aware of war time
lingo such as ‘evacuation’
5. MEDICINE
• The first world war gave birth to
plastic surgery to try to fix the
traumas of new weaponry.
• During the 1930s plastic surgery
got more popular and there
were surgeons working in
Britain.
• The word face-lift was first
added to the OED in 1939,
