Ninety-six years ago this week 476 British tanks, the largest assembly until then, were massing for the Battle of Cambrai in Flanders.
While the English-speaking world refers to them as “tanks” because of an order that they were to be described as “water tanks” while they were being shipped to France, the French called them “chars (as in chariots ) de combat”.
More practically, perhaps, the Germans called them panzerkampfwagens, literally “armoured fighting vehicles”, later known simply as “panzers”.
Source: Fight the Good Fight, Britain, the Army and the Coming of the First World War
by Allan Mallinson, Bantam Press, 2013 and Wikipedia.