Curious Word: revanchist

Today's curious word actually comes from a couple days ago. But it's today that I found the scribbled note in my pants that I eventually was able to decipher as the word above. I stumbled across the term while reading an article that didn't survive a midafternoon trip to Heroes. No, I didn't tip over the half-gallon of beer they served me. It's just that after consuming it I neglected to recall that I had been reading anything and walked out unencumbered by my tidy bundle of articles for a class on national security.

Regardless, the term revanchist means roughly the following:

revanchist:

of or pertaining to revanchists or revanchism.

Righto, that's all. See ya!

...

I jest. That is, in fact, one of the meanings of revanchist, but there's a bit more to it. Going to the root word...

revanche:

1. The act of retaliating; revenge.
2. A usually political policy, as of a nation or an ethnic group, intended to regain lost territory or standing.

Ah, now it becomes clear. The word comes from the old French revancher, which is to avenge. In context, the author used revanchist to describe the policies of Germany during Hitler's rise to power...which makes perfect sense to me.

This did, I must admit, beg the question of whether a similar policy was being pursued by those in the Middle East who perpetually refer to historical wrongs (usually on the part of Christians and the malificent West) and the need to right them (using one parts holy war and a seventeen parts whining all the damn time about every perceived slight -- see the man with the mitre at the German university).

To describe such a situation, might we say it smacks of "revanche, perchance in the Levant?"

We might, but we'd be better off describing global terrorism as an "avalanche of revanche."

Very good.