civilian

[Arnold M. Zwicky]

On Feb 14, 2007, at 8:56 AM, David Bergdahl wrote:

> Yesterday on an NPR news report on the recent violence in Lebanon I
> heard an
> unusual [to me] usage of the term "civilian," not as "non-military"
> but as
> "not a gov't official" and today's NY Times has the same usage...

i think if you look around you can find other extended uses of
"civilian", to refer to a non-member of some specialized group.  i've
heard it used by people in various academic fields (linguistics,
physics, etc.) to refer anyone who's not a specialist in their field.

a natural metaphor.  not, so far as i can tell, in the OED.

arnold

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