Illustrations of Sassanid Persian Clibanarii

[Urselius]

A military nomenclature parallel can be seen in the word 'tank'. Tank was coined by the British as a simple piece of disinformation when referring to their secret armoured, tracked fighting vehicle during its development in WWI. However, it is also obvious that the term was chosen because it was descriptive, the battlefield tank was just a self-motile metal box. Interestingly, the term entered general use and when the French and Germans built their own versions the term 'tank' was applied by the British to those also.