During the first World War, the English language changed faster than almost any other time in history…The war produced a huge amount of military slang. Many of those phrases are still around today…and one of them is “basket case”. We know that as a reference to a person “who is useless or unable to cope”… but that’s not what it meant back then. How did the term “basket case” come about, during World War One?

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.