napoo
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English
[edit]Etymology
[edit]World War I British and ANZAC army slang, probably a corruption of French “il n′y a plus” (“there is no more”).
Adjective
[edit]napoo (not comparable)
- (military slang, now historical) Finished, dead, no more, gone; non-existent. [from 20th c.]
- 1918 April, 'R', An elegy on my dugout, when it was done in, published in Four Whistles by D Company of the Scottish Officer Cadet Battalion, quoted in Graham Seal, The Soldiers' Press: Trench Journals in the First World War 2013 →ISBN:
- What shall I do? / My poor old dug-out is napoo.
- 1920 March 10, “Won on the Posts. (With the British Army in France.)”, in Punch, or The London Charivari, volume CLVIII, London: […] Bradbury, Agnew & Co., […], →OCLC, page 185, column 1:
- “[…] It seems scrounging for fuel ’ad reached such a pitch in the village […] But our washing ’ad to be done, ’an I thought if I got the whole of this football team scrounging they might find something as everyone else ’ad overlooked. […]” / “‘Very well,’ says I, ‘San fairy ann. Napoo washing—napoo ball.’ […]”
- ‘Very well,’ says I, ‘it doesn't matter. No more washing—no more ball.’
- 1929 November, Robert Graves, chapter XVII, in Good-bye to All That: An Autobiography, London: Jonathan Cape […], →OCLC, page 237:
- One afternoon the corps was due to shift, so that morning the cook said to the Turco, giving him his farewell tin: 'Oh la, la, Johnny, napoo pozzy tomorrow.'
- 1964, Pierre van Paassen, To Number Our Days, page 159:
- The war was napoo, fini, and the Rhine the end of the journey.
- 1918 April, 'R', An elegy on my dugout, when it was done in, published in Four Whistles by D Company of the Scottish Officer Cadet Battalion, quoted in Graham Seal, The Soldiers' Press: Trench Journals in the First World War 2013 →ISBN:
- (military slang, now historical) Dead. [from 20th c.]
- 1918, Hereward Carrington, Psychical Phenomena and the War, page 69:
- ‘Hey, Bill, where′s Charles?’ / ‘Napoo.’ / ‘What?’ / ‘Yes. He was out on a listening post and lit a cigarette. Sniper got him.’
Verb
[edit]napoo (third-person singular simple present napoos, present participle napooing, simple past and past participle napooed)
- (UK, army, slang) To finish; to put an end to; to kill.
- He will napoo the rations.
- 1918, Roland Pertwee, The Little Landscape: Everybody′s Magazine, volume 38, page 35:
- “The general says that if you are wise you will leave before the cannons come. Otherwise you′ll get ‘napooed,’ ” and he made an expressive gesture. “Compris?”
- 1918, Hereward Carrington, Psychical Phenomena and the War, page 68:
- I thought a man was lucky if he did not get napooed first trip in.
- 1984, John Masters, Man of War, 1984, US title High Command, page 230,
- “No,” Merton said shortly. “We sit tight, they find us. If we both go wandering about looking for each other in the middle of the night, we′ll start a battle and the whole plan for tomorrow will be napooed.”
- 1988, Sidney Rogerson, Twelve days, page 19:
- German planes had not only carried out a raid behind our lines, but a long-range shell had actually hit one of the Battalion cookers and “napooed” it completely.
Interjection
[edit]napoo
- (UK, army, slang) There is no more.
- 1939, Ruthven Todd, Over the Mountain, published 1978, page 216:
- “ […] Finish! Napoo!” and he spread his hands expressively, holding the cup upside down with the cloth hanging out of it, before he went on: “But it hasn't come to that yet. […] ”