 Following the soldiers' return home from the war, the term spread to "movement radicals", and, by the 1970s, to everyday discourse as a replacement for "heel", "cad" and other milder insults.According to Nunberg, the Internet has further solidified the word's place in the English language.Popularized in part by author and Army veteran Norman Mailer in his 1948 novel "The Naked and the Dead", the term continued to spread into popular culture via the works of Woody Allen and Neil Simon.