What conflict was called The Great War?

THERE IS NOTHING GREAT ABOUT ANY WAR !!!!!!!!!!!!!

have a clue people, it was great becouse it was all encompasing and for its time all consuming...of course it was not great it a posative sense ....maybe a process of thinking for your self might be in order..

The "Great War" (also The War to End all Wars) is it's proper title because it wasn't known as the "First World War" until the Launch of the "Second World War".

In retrospect, there was nothing "great" about this one.

I thinks "Great" means "Big".

Probably the word 'great' was used to refer to World War I as the BIGGEST war ever seen, not great as in wonderful. Modern meaning of 'great' differs from back then.

Not quite true Dave Miller, think you’re forgetting a certain conflict in Turkey Gallipoli, which involved Australia and a poor navy campaign in the Dardanelles led by a certain Mr Churchill

It was known as the ‘great war’ because it was supposed to be ‘the war to end all wars ‘, which clearly is not the case especially given the current rumbling in the Ukraine- bit more info on the answer instead of just a small Paragraph and a usual Wikipedia page would have helped.

Explanation is a bit less.

Six million Jews perished during WWll, but ten million were exterminated. Along with the Jews I doubt if many gypsies, handicapped, Catholics, scientists, intellectuals and political dissidents thought any war was great.

It never should have happened had a certain British dignitary bothered to return another dignitaries phone calls.

I would certainly recommend reading Dr Stuart Lee , Oxford University , ' Lest We Forget ' project leader who writes in ' The memory of war ' that whilst he was visiting colleagues in Germany the topic of what we call the war arose in conversation. One of his German friends noted that in Britain we occasionally use the term ' The Great War' presumably, he suggested, because it was ' great' in the sense that Britain was victorious. When he pointed out that it was not from ' great ' as in 'wonderful' , but 'great' as in magnitude and scale he was slightly bemused .

When I was young my mom had a set of encyclopedias that listed WWI as "The World War". A the the time printed I think people didn't think there wpuld ne another one!

No war should be called great, except by those who initiated or caused it for some selfish ends.

Interesting, indeed. Had never known it before. Thanks for the information.

That's what my grandmother, a teacher, called it.

I do not call WW1 The Great War, I call it Phase One ofthe War of the 20th Century.

I actually think it became "The First World War" after Winston Churchill published his monumental account of the second with the title "The Second World War". In 1939, the "war" was a purely European war between Germany on the one hand and the UK and France on the other. It didn't become a "World War" until December 1941, when war broke out with Japan in the Pacific.

Got it right!

If you ever experienced war? It's the most ugly thing imaginable