Sausage Fest: Bangers and Mash at Red Lion Pub

Ask your typical Brit or Anglophile where the term “bangers” comes from, and you’ll hear a stiff-upper-lipped tale of World War II, meat rationing and high water content in sausages which popped when cooked too long. This 2005 BBC News story on “The politics of sausage” sums up that version of the term’s origin:
“Bangers” dates from WWII - high water content meant they exploded when fried
One problem: Aussies have been calling sausages “bangers” since at least WWI. The Oxford English Dictionary’s first citation comes from 1919, in W.H. Downing’s Digger Dialects, a glossary of phrases and terms used by Australian soldiers during the Great War. The term popped up again in 1928 in the Weekly Dispatch before, ahem, exploding into common usage as a result of watery links during the Second World War.











