The Origins of "No Man's Land" (Redux)

Zonnebeke
Sir William Orpen, 1918

By Editor/Publisher Mike Hanlon

When I came across the information below, I realized I needed to delete my 2013 article on the same topic. Hopefully it's unfindable by the mightiest search engine Silicon Valley can create. 

The late Penn State historian Professor Stanley Weintraub (1929–2019) in his 2001 work Silent Night: The Story of the World War I Christmas Truce claimed to have found the original application of  No Man's Land in his work:  "The first reference I have found to the term is from 1320. In medieval England, Nonemanneslond was a waste beyond London jurisdiction used for executions—usually beheadings. It gradually came to mean a killing field belonging to no side. In wartime it was the territory separating the two sides."

The Etymonline website agrees fully with the professor in their entry:

no-man's-land(n.)

also no man's land, "terrain between front lines of entrenched armies," 1908, popularized in World War I; earlier a tract or district to which no one has an established claim; a region which is the subject of dispute between two parties" (by 1876). Nonemanneslond (early 14c.) was the name given to an unowned waste ground outside the north wall of London, the site of executions. No man (Old English nanne mon) was an old way of saying "nobody.

Etymonline also provides an interesting usage graph (an engram) with their entry that shows zero examples of the usage of the term in the entire 19th century and up to 1907. (More on that below.) Then in 1914, as we might have guessed, a stupendous take off occurs. The frequency of usage grows year by year until 1960 when it leveled off and now in the 21st century is skyrocketing again in popularity. It's still growing for some reason.

By the way, Google's AI Gemini (which I'm starting to discover can be handy) has an explanation for that 1907 blip:

In 1907, the phrase "no-man's-land" experienced a major spike in American popular usage because Oklahoma officially gained statehood, legally dissolving a famous, lawless territory, now the Oklahoma panhandle,  that had been known as "No Man's Land" for decades.  Yep, there's a sign there if you don't trust AI's word.

The Once No Man's Land Where a Major Episode of the
Christmas Truce Took Place

It also adds some helpful bits about its WWI usage:

It was re-adopted into active military correspondence and public reporting on the Western Front by Ernest Swinton in late 1914 (during the "Race to the Sea") to describe the deadly, unclaimed strip of terrain separating opposing British and German trench systems. . . [and, bringing us back to Professor Weintraub's book] gained broad public and journalistic currency around December 1914, particularly after the spontaneous Christmas Truce, when newspapers used it to describe where opposing soldiers met between the lines.

A final note: For most of my lifetime, I've been asking myself,  "Should the word be hyphenated?'  To say the least, style books and websites are ambiguous and confusing on this issue.  So, you will continue to find both versions used on Roads to the Great War. If the style books can't make up their minds, neither can I.

Readers with an interest in word origins might be interested in my article "Why Were They Called Doughboys?"  HERE.