Kerry's sing. "troop"

[Jonathan Lighter]

This sounds a little odd, but not as weird as nonhumorous singular "troop." I think it's been around for a long time, though OED doesn't notice it.

  In Inglish you'll be able to say, "He was a force in World War VIII."

  JL
"Mark A. Mandel" <mamandel at LDC.UPENN.EDU> wrote:
  ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
Sender: American Dialect Society
Poster: "Mark A. Mandel"
Subject: Re: Kerry's sing. "troop"
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Coincidentally (I *refuse* to [mis]use "ironically"here!), I've just spotted
a similar use of "forces" for counting individual (putative) combatants:

[...] company was responsible for the capture of over 450 Iraqi and
insurgent forces.

In starting off this thread, Jonathan Lighter wrote:
>>>
If you want to be utterly inclusive and maximally concise, and you don't
like the use of "warrior," you may find yourself at a loss for words. What
to do ? You say "troop." "Troop" sounds very wrong - not to mention absurd -
to us antediluvians, but it could be another vibrant precursor of tomorrow's
everyday Inglish.
<<<

But here the reference has to be even broader, including persons who are not
members of any formal armed service; hence (I speculate) "forces".

BTW, this comes from a piece of military formal prose: "JUSTIFICATION FOR
THE AWARD OF THE LEGION OF MERIT TO [rank] [name] / [regiment] [brigade]
[division]".

m a m

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org



---------------------------------
Access over 1 million songs - Yahoo! Music Unlimited.

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org