Editing Chinese fire drill (section)

== Origins ==
The term is generally regarded as having originated with British troops either during or prior to WWI, with the phrase then spreading to their American counterparts due to their mixing throughout the war. The phrase then remained popular in American English while eventually falling out of use elsewhere.<ref>{{Cite web |title=Blue Moons, Chinese Fire Drill, Cocktail, Galoot, Whazzat thing?, Scotious and Stocious. |url=http://www.word-detective.com/back-x.html }}</ref>

One specific tale of the phrase's origin is alleged<ref>{{Cite web |title=Chinese Fire Drill - phrase meaning and origin |url=https://www.phrases.org.uk/bulletin_board/17/messages/1253.html |access-date=2024-12-13 |website=www.phrases.org.uk |language=en}}</ref> to have occurred in the 1900s when a ship run by British officers and a Chinese crew practiced a [[fire drill]] for a fire in the engine room. The [[bucket brigade]] were to draw water from the [[Port and starboard|starboard side]], pass it to the [[engine room]], and pour it onto the simulated "fire". To prevent flooding, a separate crew was ordered to ferry the accumulated water from the engine room up to the main deck, and to heave the water over the [[Port and starboard|port side]]. The drill had previously gone according to plan, until the orders were confused in [[language interpretation|interpretation]]. The bucket brigade began to draw the water from the starboard side, run directly over to the port side and then throw the water overboard, bypassing the engine room completely.<ref name="digerati">{{cite web| url= http://www.thedigeratipeninsula.org.uk/archive/2005/08/27/chinese-fire-drill/ |title= Chinese Fire Drill |work= The Digerati Peninsula| archiveurl= https://archive.today/20121224060137/http://www.thedigeratipeninsula.org.uk/archive/2005/08/27/chinese-fire-drill/ |archivedate=2012-12-24 | publisher= | access-date= February 3, 2021}}</ref> {{Unreliable source?|date=August 2023}}

Alternatively, the phrase's origin may lie in the historical Western use of the word ''Chinese'' to denote "confusion" and "incomprehensibility", which historians trace to the earliest contacts between Europeans and Chinese people in the 1600s, attributing it to Europeans' inability to understand China's radically different culture and world view.<ref>{{cite book|last=Dale|first=Corinne H.|title=Chinese Aesthetics and Literature: A Reader| year=2004|publisher=State University of New York Press|location=New York|isbn=0-7914-6022-3|pages=15–25}}</ref> In his 1989 ''Dictionary of Invective'', British editor Hugh Rawson lists 16 phrases that use the word "Chinese" to denote "incompetence, fraud and disorganization".<ref>{{cite book|last=Hughes|first=Geoffrey|title=An Encyclopedia of Swearing: The Social History of Oaths, Profanity, Foul Language, and Ethnic Slurs in the English-speaking World |year= 2006| publisher= M.E. Sharpe|isbn=0-7656-1231-3|page=76}}</ref>

Other examples of such use include:
* "Chinese [[puzzle]]", a puzzle with a nonexistent or a hard-to-fathom solution.<ref name="word-detective">{{cite web| url= http://www.word-detective.com/back-x.html |title= Blue Moons, Chinese Fire Drill, Cocktail, Galoot, Whazzat thing?, Scotious and Stocious| first= Evan| last= Morris| website= word-detective.com| publisher= Evan Morris | date= | access-date= February 3, 2021}}</ref>
* "[[Chinese whispers]]", a children's game in which a straightforward statement is shared through a sequence of players, one player at a time, until it reaches the end, often getting comically transformed along the way into a completely different statement. This game is also known as "broken telephone" in [[North America]] and "wire-less telephone" in [[Brazil]].
* "Chinese ace", an inept pilot, derived from the term "one wing low" (which supposedly sounds like a Chinese name), an aeronautical maneuver.<ref name="word-detective"/><ref name="randomhouse">{{cite web| url= http://www.randomhouse.com/wotd/index.pperl?date=19961008 |work= The Mavens' Word of the Day| title= Chinese fire drill| via= randomhouse.com| publisher= Random House| url-status= unfit| date= October 8, 1996| archiveurl= https://web.archive.org/web/20060205160341/http://www.randomhouse.com/wotd/index.pperl?date=19961008| archivedate= February 5, 2006| access-date= February 3, 2021}}</ref>