Etymology

strafe

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Today it means: To attack (ground targets) with automatic gunfire from a low-flying aircraft. Full definition →

German strafe
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The story

  1. German · borrowed fromstrafe“punish”
  2. English todaystrafe

Borrowed from German strafe (“punish”) (a conjugated form of strafen), from phrases like Gott strafe England (“God punish England”) which the British saw during the First World War.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.