semantic drift: "platoon"

[Jonathan Lighter]

Before my generally quasi-impeccable usage is cited by the syntacticians of tomorrow, the  structure >formations of a several dozen soldiers each< contains an intrusive and blunderiferous "a."  I wrote "a few," then tried to fix it.

  I apologize for any inconvenience.

  P.S.: I just made up "blundiferous."  Some day you'll thank me.

  JL

  Wilson Gray <hwgray at GMAIL.COM> wrote:
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Sender: American Dialect Society
Poster: Wilson Gray
Subject: Re: semantic drift: "platoon"
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Poor Stanley! And curse that Michael Webster and his little school,
which routinely kicked UC Davis's ass in football, too!

The Great-Souled One we can forgive as being a non-native speaker.

-Wilson

On 1/24/08, Jonathan Lighter wrote:
> ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
> Sender: American Dialect Society
> Poster: Jonathan Lighter
> Subject: semantic drift: "platoon"
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Here it means "a contingent of (any number of) soldiers." Not in OED.
>
> 1905 in Mohandas Gandhi _The Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi_ IV 1 [http://www.gandhiserve.org/cwmg/VOL004.PDF] : A platoon of 14,371 men was sent out to China, when the Boxer Rebellion broke out in that country.
>
>
> ca2006 Michael Webster _Iliad: Reading Assignments_ http://faculty.gvsu.edu/websterm/Iliad.htm : Catalogue of Ships and Men. The troops are outlined here, first those of the Danaans... There are 29 "platoons."... Note that Agamemnon has the largest platoon; Telamonian Ajax has the smallest. The Trojan platoons and their allies are described last.
>
> Dr. Webster is Associate Professor of Engliah at Grand Valley State University, Michigan.
>
> Webster's text is Stanley Lombardo's translation of the Iliad. So far as I can tell, Lombardo uses the word only to refer to formations of a several dozen soldiers each.
>
>
> JL
>
>
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