Home › Glossary › Letter B

Boche

Historical Allusion
Pronunciation

Understanding ARPABET Pronunciation

Want to hear it? Click the Listen button to hear the browser speak the word using text-to-speech!

The pronunciation guide uses the ARPABET phonetic system—the same system used in speech recognition and text-to-speech applications.

Vowel Examples:
AE1 = cat, bat
EH1 = bed, head
IY1 = see, me
OW1 = go, boat
UW1 = boot, do
Stress Numbers:
0 = no stress (unstressed)
1 = primary stress (loud)
2 = secondary stress (medium)
Example:
AH0 TH IY1 N AH0
= a-THEE-na (Athena)

The stressed syllable (marked with 1) is pronounced louder and clearer than others.

Quick Definition

A German soldier or German person, especially in wartime British slang. It is now dated and often offensive.

Detailed Definition
In British writing from the First World War, Boche was a slang term for Germans, especially enemy soldiers. Owen uses it to mark the dug-out as enemy-held and to reflect the harsh, dehumanizing language of trench warfare.
Example
Example in poetry:
“We’d found an old Boche dug-out” uses a wartime term for a German soldier; in First World War verse, Boche often carries hostile trench-language; the abandoned Boche dug-out preserves the enemy’s human traces; contemporary historical poems may retain the word only to examine propaganda and prejudice
Additional Notes
The word in the evidence is a dated wartime slang term, not a normal modern word.; Found in the poem, The Sentry by Wilfred Owen
Also Known As
German enemy foe adversary
Skip to main content