"casualty"

[Bill Palmer]

In the US Navy's system of reporting and remaing abreast of unit operational
readiness, failed equipment or machinery is termed a "casualty".

The formatted report to higher authority is a CASREP.  This has become a
verb, e.g., "We have to casrep the air search radar"

Bill P
----- Original Message -----
From: "Victor Steinbok" <aardvark66 at GMAIL.COM>
To: <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
Sent: Thursday, October 14, 2010 11:15 AM
Subject: Re: "casualty"


> ---------------------- Information from the mail
> header -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Victor Steinbok <aardvark66 at GMAIL.COM>
> Subject:      Re: "casualty"
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>  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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