Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
Wikipedia
The Phoney War was an eight-month period at the start of World War II, during which there were no major military land operations on the Western Front. It began with the declaration of war by the western Allies (the United Kingdom and France) against Nazi Germany on , following the German invasion of Poland, and ended with the German attack on France and the Low Countries on 10 May 1940.
Even though Poland was overrun in about five weeks in the German Invasion of Poland beginning on and Soviet invasion beginning on , the Western Allies did nothing. War had been declared by each side, but no Western power committed to launching a significant land offensive, notwithstanding the terms of the Anglo-Polish and Franco-Polish military alliances which obliged the United Kingdom and France to assist Poland.
The quiet of the Phoney War was punctuated by a few Allied actions. In the Saar Offensive in September, the French attacked Germany with the intention of assisting Poland, but it fizzled out within days and they withdrew. In November, the Soviets attacked Finland in the Winter War, resulting in much debate in France and Britain about an offensive to help Finland, but the forces finally assembled for this campaign were delayed until it ended in March. The Allied discussions about a Scandinavian campaign caused concern in Germany and resulted in the German invasion of Denmark and Norway in April, and the Allied troops previously assembled for Finland were redirected to Norway instead. Fighting there continued until June when the Allies evacuated, ceding Norway to Germany in response to the German invasion of France.
On the Axis side, the Germans launched attacks at sea in the autumn and winter against British aircraft carriers and destroyers, sinking several including the carrier with the loss of 519 lives. Action in the air began on when the Luftwaffe launched air raids on British warships. There were various minor bombing raids and reconnaissance flights on both sides.
Usage examples of "phoney war".
Just before the 1940 Democratic convention the Phoney War ended and France fell.
She was no longer an adolescent indulging with her boyfriend in the grope-a-Sutra sexual phoney war known as heavy petting.
The war broke out while all this was in train, and to begin with, in England, this war was a phoney war.
The British people, far from remembering they were God's chivalry began to show such a detachment from what was variously called the Bore or the Phoney War that the government became seriously worried.
The peace of the last two weeks, the simple joy of having Leigh on my side, all of that now seemed to be the unnatural thing, the false thing - as false as the phoney war between Hitier's conquest of Poland and the Wehrmacht's rolling assault on France.