War Eagle is a battle cry, yell, or motto of Auburn University and supporters of Auburn University sports teams, especially the Auburn Tigers football team. War Eagle is a common term of endearment, greeting, or salutation among the Auburn Family (e.g., students, alumni, fans). It is also the title of the university's fight song and the name of the university's golden eagles. It is incorrect to say the War Eagle battle cry in the plural, as in "War Eagles".
The unofficial variation "War Damn Eagle," which is sometimes abbreviated in written form as "WDE," is sometimes used to express extra emphasis.
The widespread use of "War Eagle" by Auburn devotees has often led to outside confusion as to Auburn's official mascot. However, the official mascot of Auburn University is Aubie the Tiger, and all Auburn athletic teams, men's and women's, are nicknamed the Tigers. Auburn has never referred to any of its athletic teams as the "Eagles" or "War Eagles." The university's official response to the confusion between the Tigers mascot and the War Eagle battle cry is, "We are the Tigers who say 'War Eagle'."
Since 1930, and continuously since 1960, Auburn has kept an actual eagle as a live, untethered mascot flying over the football stadium at athletic events. War Eagle VII, a Golden Eagle named Nova, along with Spirit, a Bald Eagle, perform the War Eagle Flight before all Auburn home games at Jordan–Hare Stadium. War Eagle VI, named Tiger, has retired from the War Eagle Flight, but is still present on campus.
Read more about War Eagle: History of The "War Eagle" Phrase, War Eagle Birds, "War Eagle" As Auburn's Fight Song
Famous quotes containing the words war and/or eagle:
“Newspaperman: That was a magnificent work. There were these mass columns of Apaches in their war paint and feather bonnets. And here was Thursday leading his men in that heroic charge.
Capt. York: Correct in every detail.
Newspaperman: He’s become almost a legend already. He’s the hero of every schoolboy in America.”
—Frank S. Nugent (1908–1965)
“O thou undaunted daughter of desires!
By all thy dower of lights and fires;
By all the eagle in thee, all the dove;
By all thy lives and deaths of love;
By thy large draughts of intellectual day,
And by thy thirsts of love more large then they;
By all thy brim-fill’d Bowls of fierce desire,
By thy last Morning’s draught of liquid fire;
By the full kingdom of that final kiss
That seiz’d thy parting Soul, and seal’d thee his;”
—Richard Crashaw (1613?–1649)