Pocket battleships

[tigerlily11]

Just why are/were they called pocket battleships?
I don't know any one who would have had a pocket big enough to fit them in.
I was watching The World at War this aftrnoon and learning about the Graf Spay. (Sorry if thats spelt wrong.)

[Cheeris]

It was just a convenient term. Roughly speaking, they were a class of WWII German warships that had were the size of heavy cruisers, with the speed and size characteristics of modern examples of the class, but with state-of-the-art innovations that made their armour and firepower far in advance and therefore comparable to battleships.

'Pocket battleships', by the way, is a British term. The Germans described it as, firstly, a 'Panzerschiffe' ('armoured ship') and then just as heavy cruisers.

[dundurn]

Anything you can put in your pocket is by definition small - cf pocket watch. The word thereby gained an extended meaning viz relatively small. So Luxembourg or Andorra might be referred to as 'pocket' countries; a short or very localised conflict might be termed a 'pocket' war while Miss Kylie Minogue has been called a 'pocket' Venus.

[Quizmonster]

Pocket has been used to mean (relatively) small since the 1600s in British English usage. In the 1860s, for exanple, a dwarf who liked to swing on tables was described as a pocket-athlete. The earliest recorded use of the word in connection with battleships appeared in an Economist article in 1930.

[tigerlily11]

So compared to other battleships of the time these were small?
Ok ty for that.

[Cheeris]

Compared to battleships they were small, yes.

But then, they weren't battleships...