Great Warn.

1815 S. Walpole (title) A history of England from the conclusion of the Great War in 1815.

1823 Edinb. Mag. & Literary Misc. Nov. 570 At the conclusion of the great war against Napoleon, they seemed perfectly united in all those points which formerly caused strife.

1887 R. D. Blackmore (title) Springhaven. A tale of the Great War.

1922 S. J. Weyman Ovington's Bank i. 7 By that coach had come eleven years before, the news of the abdication of the Corsican and the close of the Great War.

1960 B. H. L. Hart in New Cambr. Mod. Hist. X. xii. 303 The conservatively minded Board of Ordnance soon achieved his dismissal, thus quenching the chance of providing the British army with a firearm superior to the flint-lock during the ‘Great War’ against Napoleon.

2007 S. Halperin in N. Karagiannis & P. Wagner Varieties of World-making vii. 138 Europe emerged into its first century of industrial capitalism from the crucible of the ‘Great War’ (the Napoleonic Wars).

1913 Waterloo (Iowa) Times-Tribune 9 Jan. 1/7 The prince [sc. Franz Ferdinand] is entirely in the hands of the most reactionary elements, who are strongly opposed to the resurrection of the Servian and Slav races, and, wishing to take advantage of Europe's desire to avoid a great war, are imposing unjust conditions both on Servia and Montenegro.]

1914 Liverpool Echo 28 July 4/8 France is Russia's ally, and more, for Germany will never be forgiven, so the Kaiser, if he thinks the Great War bound to come, must perforce select the best time for himself.

1914 Syracuse (N.Y.) Herald 1 Aug. 1/2 German and British warships are maneuvering in Norwegian waters and the opening of the great war may be signalized by the most terrific naval battle of modern history.

1914 Maclean's Oct. 53/1 Some wars name themselves... This is the Great War.

1915 C. Grahame-White & H. Harper (title) Aircraft in the Great War.

1916 K. J. Finzi Eighteen Months in War Zone ii. xi. 171 Your children around you asking, like the little boy in the picture, ‘And what did you do in the great war, Daddy?’

1937 A. Koestler Spanish Test. iv. 84 We know how much harm the preposterous atrocity propaganda engaged in by both sides caused during the Great War.

1969 A. Toynbee Experiences ii. iii. 221 ‘The Great War’—as, until the fall of France, the British continued to call the First World War in order to avoid admitting to themselves that they were now again engaged in a war of the same magnitude.

2011 J. Black Great War & Making of Mod. World Pref. p. xv The First World War was the Great War for its leading participants, for example La Grande Guerre for the French, except for the Germans, for whom it was Der Weltkrieg.