"casualty"

[Victor Steinbok]

  OK, OED is not the only dictionary on the planet. The top-level
OneLook definitions:

> ? noun:  a decrease of military personnel or equipment
> ? noun:  someone injured or killed in an accident
> ? noun:  someone injured or killed or captured or missing in a
> military engagement
> ? noun:  an accident that causes someone to die

Note that there is even an ambiguity between first, second and third
definitions. There is confusion between second and fourth as well,
although, obviously, not between first and fourth.

Wiktionary adds two more for "casualty":

> Something that happens by chance, especially an unfortunate event; an
> accident, a disaster.
> (UK) The accident and emergency department of a hospital

and one more for "casualties":

> The collective tally of injuries and fatalities of an event.

Note that this /does not/ include the missing or captured. In fact, it's
been quite some time since I've heard anyone refer to captured soldiers
as "casualties", but Jon has been around much longer than I and has
spoken the language longer still.

MWD of Law adds the insurance use (as in "life and casualty"):

> something lost, stolen, damaged, or destroyed

Then, of course, there is Nabokov:

> I wonder where you got your statistics when you say that Theirs
> executed more people than did the Terreur? I object to this kind of
> excuse for two reasons. Although from a Christian's or a
> mathematician's point of view a thousand people killed in battle a
> hundred years ago equal a thousand people killed in a battle of today,
> historically the first definition is "slaughter" and the second "some
> casualties." Secondly: one cannot compare the slapdash suppression,
> however abominable, of a revolt with the thorough application of a
> system of murder.

I don't find the use as problematic as Jon does. Perhaps it's a
generations gap. When did we start worrying about the evolution of words
into multiple, even overlapping, meanings? I always thought this was
something we left to the French...

     VS-)


On 10/13/2010 7:58 PM, Garson O'Toole wrote:
> The passage uses the term "casualties" as a synonym for "dead
> causalities". I think that Jon finds this "very misleading and to be
> deplored".
> The use of "casualties" with this constrained meaning is non-ambiguous
> in this example because the previous sentence says "worthy monument to
> our dead". It does not say "worthy monument to our dead and wounded".
>
> I am reminded of this riddle:
> Question: A planes crashes on the US-Canada border. Where are the
> survivors buried?
> Answer: Survivors are not buried.
>
> Here is an similar riddle I just constructed (or remembered).
> Question: A planes crashes on the US-Canada border. One of the
> casualties is not buried for more than 50 years. Why not?

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