Kerry's sing. "troop"

[Arnold M. Zwicky]

On Nov 2, 2006, at 6:10 AM, Jon Lighter wrote:

> Sen. Kerry said yesterday he did not intend to insult "any troop."
> Use of "troop" in the singular meaning "soldier" is first attested
> - though rarely - as a semi-humorous designation during WWII.
> During the Vietnam era, it was fairly common in the Army...

we had a thread on this back in 2003, started by a posting of mine
(14 april) noting the use of "troops" with numbers and bringing up
some of the problems jon discusses in today's posting (referring to
all the branches of the armed forces with a single term, referring to
men and women with a single term, etc.).

there were follow-ups by Dave Hause and Dave Wilton, and then on 15
april, three in a row reporting uses of sg. "troop" to refer to one
person -- from Herb Stahlke, Peter Richardson, and Jim Landau -- only
one of which (Richardson's reporting of "young troop" as an address
term) might be jocular.  as jon says, it looks like the usage has
been around at least since vietnam times.

arnold

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