Kerry's sing. "troop"

[Seán Fitzpatrick]

Personal observation:  Back in the Vietnam era, DIs would sometimes address
one of their charges with (the correct) singular, as “young trooper”. It was
used mostly jocularly, but it was a proper term for soldiers in airborne
(paratrooper) units and armored (cavalry) units.  Of all the choices
available, Kerry picked one of the more awkward.

 

Seán Fitzpatrick
Why doesn't global warming just go up out of the ozone hole?
http://www.logomachon.blogspot.com/

-----Original Message-----
From: Arnold M. Zwicky [mailto:zwicky at CSLI.STANFORD.EDU] 
Sent: Thursday, 02 November, 2006 10:11
Subject: Re: Kerry's sing. "troop"

 

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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