884: jerrycan May 10, 2017

For various reasons, especially concerning wars and other conflicts, people adopt an us-versus-them perspective that makes its way into language to some extent. Occasionally these situations result in adopting words from one language into another when these two groups are now in close contact who wouldn't be otherwise, as with 'gung-ho', but often a slew of derogatory terms arise in order to refer to a group of people mockingly and negatively. In WWI, the Germans were often called 'huns', or 'krauts' which also was used during WWII. While those would probably still be considered offensive, 'jerrycan' comes from a WWII-era slang-term for 'German', as originally the well-crafted fuel-cans were a German invention that was eventually reverse-engineered by the British and later used to replace their more flimsy, awkwardly shaped ones. The name, and with it a possible connotation to Germans stuck.