[Ads-l] troops

[Dave Wilton]

"Troops" (with an s) is not ambiguous. It almost always refers to a number of soldiers. The one exception is when referring to the US Army cavalry, where "troop" is the term used to refer to a specific unit (a "company" in other branches of the service). So "three cavalry troops" could refer to three soldiers or three companies of cavalry. I'm not aware of any other armies that use "troop" as the name for a subunit.

"Troop" (without an s) may be ambiguous if the context does not make it clear. It can refer to one soldier or a group of soldiers. Because it can be ambiguous some consider the use of "troop" to refer to a single soldier as a misuse. Most of the controversy, including the bulk of the linked Visual Thesaurus article, is about whether or not the single-soldier sense is an error.


-----Original Message-----
From: American Dialect Society [mailto:ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU] On Behalf Of Christopher Philippo
Sent: Sunday, September 18, 2016 9:22 AM
To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
Subject: Re: [ADS-L] troops

That “troops” may be used for both a number of people or a number of military subunits, and that both uses may be correct creates ambiguity - as stated repeatedly in the link I had shared in connection with my referring to the ambiguity, e.g.:

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