War and wurst (as in bratwurst and liverwurst) both come from the Proto-Indo-European root *wers- meaning “to confuse, mix up”. Wurst, which means “sausage” in German, comes from the idea of “mixture”, and war comes from the sense “to bring into confusion” and thus “strife”. This root also gives us the words worse and guerrilla. The phrase Sausage War is sometimes used to refer to an odd episode during the 1939-1940 Winter War between the Soviet Union and Finland in which a Soviet attack was crucially delayed when the undernourished Red Army stopped to eat sausage soup left behind by Finnish cooks allowing Finnish reinforcements to arrive.
The #ConnectedAtBirth #etymology of the week is WAR/WURST #wotd #war #wurst #bratwurst #liverwurst
