Who first used the term "cold war"?

George Orwell was a well-known English writer, the author of such renowned works as Nineteen Eighty-Four, Animal Farm and The Road to Wigan Pie. He coined the general term "cold war" and used it in his essay "You and the Atomic Bomb". In this article, Orwell examined the social and political consition of ‘a state which was at once unconquerable and in a permanent state of “cold war” with its neighbors’. The term has become fixed later, meaning an indirect war or conflict between countries, brought into action through different political actions and promotion. The definition was used in the language before, for example, to describe Hitler's politics. But Orwell became the first one to apply the term to the conditions that emerged after WWII.

More Info: en.wikipedia.org

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24 Comments

William Laughlin

Priscilla Grenier Lund Check out George Orwell's essay, ‘You and the Atomic Bomb’, first published by the Tribune of London, England on October 19, 1945. He uses the term "cold war" in this essay. http://orwell.ru/library/articles/ABomb/english/e_abomb

William Laughlin

Cynthia Snyder Check out George Orwell's essay, ‘You and the Atomic Bomb’, first published by the Tribune of London, England on October 19, 1945. He uses the term "cold war" in this essay. http://orwell.ru/library/articles/ABomb/english/e_abomb

Alan Waites

William Laughlin, yes but that was in reference to the atomic bombs dropped on Japan, not specifically to the situation between the West and the East. Therefore the answer stands.

David Roy

Chet Scheel, Orson Well(e)s? I don't think so!

Marian Spitzig

Well, I can see all 4 options are wrong! Which I was going to state...not sure now who was the first.

David Holmes

Rob Knuth, be careful with Wikipedia everyone and their dog can edit it. Wikipedia is not the Britanica

David Holmes

Lise Mitchell, The Internet can be an unreliable, don't take the first item you see as correct.

Clarence Johnson

The answer is wrong Baruch said it first

Bill Coe

If not Don Juan Manuel and if it predates Orwell, then who is it. Not Baruch. He was advised of the term by Herbert Bayard Swope in 39/40. It was in the United States, not accidentally, that the Cold War as a term entered popular discourse. It was there too that much of the early discussion about its nature and causes took place and where the preponderance of historiography on the subject would later appear. The Cold War was from the beginning an American concern. It has never quite been established who coined the phrase. Nor does it much matter. Bernard Baruch, the aging financier and sometime policymaker, used the term in the spring of 1947 but in passing and without any elaboration. By his own subsequent account, Baruch took it from his friend and speechwriter Herbert Bayard Swope, who claimed he had come up with it while considering the socalled Phoney War of 1939–1940, the odd and extended early phase of World War II in Europe when nothing substantial by way of military activity took place. I still stick with Don Juan Manuel. Read more: http://www.americanforeignrelations.com/A-D/Cold-War-Origins-Genealogy-of-the-term.html#ixzz4REQdKR81

Bill Coe

William Laughlin Surprised you missed this reference. The expression "cold war" was rarely used before 1945. Some writers credit the fourteenth century Spaniard, Don Juan Manuel for first using the term (in Spanish), when dealing with the conflict between Christianity and Islam as a "cold war". However he used the term "tepid" not "cold". The word "cold" first appeared in a faulty translation of his work in the 19th century

Chet Scheel

Very POOR question and answer is WRONG. Depending on way the question is offered, the correct answer coulld be Don Juan Manuel, Orson Wells or Bernard Baruch. As presented, the correct answer would be Don Juan Manuel From Wikipedia: The expression "cold war" was rarely used before 1945. Some writers credit the fourteenth century Spaniard, Don Juan Manuel for first using the term (in Spanish), when dealing with the conflict between Christianity and Islam as a "cold war". However he used the term "tepid" not "cold". The word "cold" first appeared in a faulty translation of his work in the 19th century.[1] At the end of World War II, George Orwell used the term in the essay “You and the Atomic Bomb” published October 19, 1945, in the British newspaper Tribune. Contemplating a world living in the shadow of the threat of nuclear war, he warned of a “peace that is no peace”, which he called a permanent “cold war”.[2] Orwell directly referred to that war as the ideological confrontation between the Soviet Union and the Western powers.[3] Moreover, in The Observer of March 10, 1946, Orwell wrote that “[a]fter the Moscow conference last December, Russia began to make a ‘cold war’ on Britain and the British Empire.”[4] The definition which has now become fixed is of a war waged through indirect conflict. The first use of the term in this sense, to describe the post–World War II geopolitical tensions between the USSR and its satellites and the United States and its western European allies is attributed to Bernard Baruch, an American financier and presidential advisor.[5] In South Carolina, on April 16, 1947, he delivered a speech (by journalist Herbert Bayard Swope)[6] saying, “Let us not be deceived: we are today in the midst of a cold war.”[7] Newspaper reporter-columnist Walter Lippmann gave the term wide currency, with the book Cold War (1947).[8]

Vicky Forrest

a speech writter for Truman used this term in 1947

Rob Knuth

I got it right, but according to Wikipedia (since the answer used it) states, "The expression "cold war" was rarely used before 1945. Some writers credit the fourteenth century Spaniard, Don Juan Manuel for first using the term (in Spanish), when dealing with the conflict between Christianity and Islam as a "cold war". However he used the term "tepid" not "cold". The word "cold" first appeared in a faulty translation of his work in the 19th century.[1]"

Linda Johnson

Got it right

Bruce Lawrence

Multimillionaire and financier Bernard Baruch, in a speech given during the unveiling of his portrait in the South Carolina House of Representatives, coins the term “Cold War” to describe relations between the United States and the Soviet Union.