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gung ho

Dictionary: gung ho or gung -ho ( gung'ho') adj. Slang.

Extremely enthusiastic and dedicated.

[Earlier Gung Ho, motto of certain U.S. Marine forces in Asia during World War II, from Chinese (Mandarin) gonghé, to work together (short for gongyèhézuòshè, Chinese Industrial Cooperative Society) : gong, work + hé, together.]

Our Living Language Most of us are not aware of it today, but the word gung ho has been in English only since 1942 and is one of the many words that entered the language as a result of World War II. It comes from Mandarin Chinese gonghé, “to work together,” which was used as a motto by the Chinese Industrial Cooperative Society. Lieutenant Colonel Evans F. Carlson (1896–1947) borrowed the motto as a moniker for meetings in which problems were discussed and worked out; the motto caught on among his Marines (the famous “Carlson's Raiders”), who began calling themselves the “Gung Ho Battalion.” From there eager individuals began to be referred to as gung ho. Other words and expressions that entered English during World War II include flak, gizmo, task force, black market, and hit the sack.

Thesaurus: gung ho Top adjective

Showing or having enthusiasm: ardent, enthusiastic, fervent, keen1, mad, rabid, warm, zealous. Informal crazy. Slang nuts. See concern/unconcern.

Idioms: gung ho Top Also, gung-ho. Extremely enthusiastic or dedicated, as in She was gung ho about her new job. This expression was introduced in 1942 as a training slogan for a U.S. Marine battalion, derived from what an American officer thought were Mandarin Chinese words for "work together." It was actually an abbreviation for the name of Chinese industrial cooperatives.

Word Origins: gung ho Top from Chinese This word originated in China

It was the best of translations; it was the worst of translations. It showed American admiration for the Chinese; it showed American misunderstanding of them. In any case, it was adopted into English with gung-ho enthusiasm.

We know exactly who was responsible for our gung ho: Lt. Col. Evans Carlson of the U.S. Marines. And we know when he first used it in English: during World War II, early in 1942, in China, to the troops of his newly formed Second Raider Battalion, which fought against the japanese invaders alongside the Chinese 8th Route Army. Carlson told Life magazine in 1943: "I was trying to build up the same sort of working spirit I had seen in China where all the soldiers dedicated themselves to one idea and worked together to put that idea over. I told the boys about it again and again. I told them of the motto of the Chinese Cooperatives, Gung Ho. It means Work Together-- Work in Harmony."

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Well, it doesn't quite mean that. Gung Ho is simply the third and fifth syllables of Chung-Guo Gung-Yeh Ho-Tso She, the name of the Chinese Industrial Cooperatives Association. Gung and Ho were used together as an abbreviation of the name and on signs designating the cooperative. It is true, however, that gung means "worker" or "work," and ho means "to agree," "joined," or "the whole," although the two together do not make a sentence or phrase in Chinese. As the exploits of Carlson's raiders became known, they filled America with gung ho enthusiasm. The term became an enduring part of the English vocabulary.

Chinese is the Number 1 language of the world, with nearly a billion speakers of its various dialects. It belongs to the Sino-Tibetan language family, to which Tibetan and Burmese also belong. Gung ho is from the dominant Mandarin dialect, spoken by more than seven hundred million people. English has imported about a hundred Chinese words, everything from ginseng (1654) and tea (1655) to yin and yang (1671), kowtow (1804) and (in a literal translation) brainwashing (1950). The word china itself, which derives from the name of the Chinese Qin dynasty, has been used in English since 1579 to mean fine porcelain.

Marine Corps Dictionary: Gung Ho Top Eager and ready to accomplish whatever task necessary.

Wikipedia: Gung-ho For other uses, see Gung-ho (disambiguation). Top Gung-ho is a phrase taken from the Chinese language. The original Mandarin Chinese phrase is Gonghé (工合), a standard abbreviation for gongyè hézuòshè ( 工業合作社), meaning industrial worker's cooperative, in the Chinese Industrial Cooperatives (INDUSCO) established by Rewi Alley and his comrades and later spread to other parts of China during the World War II years.

The phrase entered the American vernacular when it was picked up by then-United States Marine Corps Major Evans Carlson, According to Carlson, it was used as a slogan by the World War II-era Communist Party of China's 8th Route Army, led by Zhu De. The phrase was originally coined by Rewi Alley, a New Zealander. Carlson traveled with the 8th and with Rewi Alley. Later he used gung ho during his (unconventional) command of the 2nd Marine Raider Battalion. From there it spread throughout the U.S. Marine Corps (hence the association between the two) and into American society as a whole when the phrase became the title of a 1943 war film , Gung Ho!, about the 2nd Raider Battalion's raid on Makin Island in 1942. It is now used to mean "excessively enthusiastic, overzealous".

References

l Alley, R. (1987) Rewi Alley - An Autobiography , New World Press.

l Albert F. Moe (1967) "Gung Ho", American Speech. The American Dialect Society.

l http://www.chinapage.com/word/gungho.html

External links

l International Committee for the Promotion of Chinese Industrial Cooperatives

l Gung Ho according to Evans Carlson http://www.angelfire.com/ca/dickg/gungho.html

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Translations: Translations for: Gung-ho Top Dansk (Danish) adj. - begejstret, fandenivoldsk, krigerisk

Français (French) adj. - va -t'en-guerre, (trop) enthousiaste

Deutsch (German) adj. - wild entschlossen

???????? (Greek) adj. - ?pe?p????µ??, ?pe?e????s??d??

Italiano (Italian) fanatico, voglioso di combattere

Português (Portuguese) adj. - tola ou excessivamente entusiasmado

??????? (Russian) ???-???, ?????!, ??????????, ???????????, ??????? (? ????????)

Español (Spanish) adj. - leal, entusiasta, oficioso

Svenska (Swedish) adj. - gåpåig

中文（简体） (Chinese (Simplified)) 起劲的, 协力的, 热心的

中文（繁體） (Chinese (Traditional)) adj. - 起勁的, 協力的, 熱心的

??? (Korean) adj. - ???, ????

日本語 (Japanese) adj. - 忠勇無双?

"???? (Hebrew) adj. - ???????-??? ?????-???? ????

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