Word of the Day – Coventrated

Coventrated (adj) (obs)

kov-en-tray-ted

To be badly bombed from the air, like Coventry.

We don’t often have obsolete words for the Word of the Day slot but I particularly like this one, found by Rosie on the BBC website virtually unknown as it was in usage for such a short time, here is the relevant paragraph for context.

“In November 1940 a new word was coined in the English language, it came about because the City of Coventry suffered a very concentrated air attack which caused many deaths and great devastation, after that whenever a town or city was very badly bombed it was said to have been ‘Coventrated’ and another word, from the German language was to become part of our own vocabulary, ‘Blitz’ an abbreviated version of the word ‘Blitzkrieg’ which means — ‘Sudden overwhelming attack with powerful force’. We learned the meaning of that word the hard way!”

Example sentences

“Plymouth was Coventrated again over night!”