[Grammar] Blitz and Assault?
- Thread starter Happpy
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They're very different, but are often used to refer to the same thing. The German Blitzen means "lightning". Someone - possibly Hitler, but Wikipedia will tell you - came up with the idea of Blitzkrieg [=lightning-war]; I suppose it was the 1940s version of what came to be known later as 'Shock and Awe' - starting and waging a war with an astonishing (awesome, morale-sapping) display of power.
The Blitzkrieg that hit London in the early '40s was commonly known in English as 'The Blitz'; when a Londoner says 'My house was bombed in the Blitz' - he is referring to a particular assault. As a result*, many speakers of English treat 'blitz' like a synonym of 'assault'.
But 'blitz' doesn't just refer to war. An office manager may say 'This week I want everyone to do a blitz on the filing' - it just refers to any sudden, brief, and intense effort of any kind. (Also, it can be used as a verb: 'I'm blitzing the housework today; there's dust everywhere, and the sunlight really shows it.')
* (I'm guessing here, but I don't believe the word 'blitz' existed in English - although closely-related words like 'blind' did - until a particular Blitzkrieg hit London.)
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