Zero hour the term origins ?

[Liz in Eastbourne]

The Wipers Times team mocked this use by pretending 'zero' was an actual time. I missed an earlier episode of Herlock Shomes in the same March 1916 issue of the Wipers Times as the 'What is Zero' query.

'While thus engaged the silvery chimes of the clock on the Cathedral spire burst forth into song announcing the magic hour of zero pm. "Bother!" ejaculated Pink in true Pioneer fashion, " At a quarter past zero I promised to meet Lizzie at Fell Hire Corner. I must indeed get a move on, otherwise she will be wroth."

Liz

[Liz in Eastbourne]

Well done Liz and certainly better than the main OED (2nd Edition), which cites the first recorded use of the term as a publication of 1917.

Jack

Thanks Jack. But the 1917 example - which I missed before! - does seem to be the earliest one we've yet found of 'zero hour' as opposed to 'zero' or 'hour of zero' so far (except Kingdom's War Office example and Skipman's newspaper reports, which it would be interesting to see).

I have the same second edition of the OED (1989 reprinted with corrections in 1991, and later sold off cheap, I suppose because of the online edition with regular updates). I like it because it's fixed at about the point where I stopped updating my own usage, so it reassures me that things were once like that!

Anyway, under 'zero', sb, meaning no. 6b, = the initial point of a process or reckoning, I found my 1916 examples. There's a note that 'hour of zero' is military obsolete for 'Zero hour'.

Under 7a, the attributive use, including 'zero day' and 'zero hour', there is as you say a 1917 example following the other combinations (that's how I missed it) :

The coming of the zero hour of 3.30 in the morning... (W. Beach, With the British on the Somme)

Liz

Edited 21 April , 2014 by Liz in Eastbourne

[Liz in Eastbourne]

The earliest mention in the British Newspaper Archives of the term " zero hour " is Monday 17 July 1916 , The Yorkshire Post and Leeds Intelligencer, relating to the Somme offensive.

Mike

Thanks for this interesting lead, Mike - don't know why I've only just looked at it myself. That example refers to 'the final phase of the artillery attack before the zero hour'. There's another reference on 18 Sept 1916 in the Aberdeen Evening Express to 'the zero hour'.

Then there are examples in 1917 and 1918 referring to 'zero hour' without 'the'.

The Liverpool Daily Post of 1 August 1917 refers to 'Z-day, zero hour'.

Liz

[Liz in Eastbourne]

From the BEF Alphabet, in The BEF Times (with which are incorporated The Wipers Times, The "New Church" Times, The Kemmel Times and The Somme-Times), a nice example of 'zero', though not 'zero hour':

Z is for ZERO, the time we go over,

Most of us wish we were way back in Dover,

Making munitions and living in clover,

And far, far away from the trenches.

March 5th 1917.

Liz

[spof]

Just to confuse things further, from 10th Essex war diary

1.7.16

7.30am.
Zero time. Infantry attack launched. Men went over splendidly and full of eagerness. Our clearing platoons went over with the leading waves.

[Fattyowls]

One of the of the footballs kicked across no mans land at 7.30 am on 1st July 1916 by the 8th Battalion, the East Surrey Regiment had the following painted on it ‘The Great European Cup-Tie Final. East Surreys v Bavarians. Kick off at zero.’ . Don't know if this helps either.

Pete.

[Liz in Eastbourne]

I think both these examples help. They confirm that especially in the earlier use of 'zero' in 1916, it wasn't always collocated with 'hour' in the phrase 'zero hour'. in other early uses we've had 'hour of zero' and Centurion's example, 'hour zero'.

In fact they help to illustrate where this military use came from, its increasing use in ordinary English of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries to mean the starting-point. There's another OED example from 1866, 'He makes 1788 his zero of human history' (J. Martineau). It's got nothing to do with any particular time of day, which is why I don't agree with Centurion's idea that it's associated with midnight or dawn. That's its usefulness, as others have pointed out - you can move it and you don't reveal anything about the time except to those who are told what Zero is in this particular instance.

I'd still like to know the exact wording of that Official Order in 1915. I'd have expected it to use 'zero' and then the phrase 'zero hour' to develop with use, since it took a while to surface in that form.

Odd that the OP came back on to the forum yesterday evening but said nothing about all our efforts, even though Kingdom seems to have confirmed that it was indeed office wallahs (EDIT or top brass - not soldiers in trenches anyway!) who coined the phrase and I've cited examples for him of soldiers taking the mickey out of it. Still, it's an interesting question, so never mind.

Liz