Shortly after posting, I got to wondering if I really had ever heard “troop” singular in this usage. I know I said I had but now I’m not so sure. “Troops” plural – yeah – all the time.
I’ve heard that in local dialect. I think they use it to indicate a measurement rather than an estimate. I’ve never heard “inch” for “inches”. “The rafter is eight foot, three inches long.”
A very old usage, and one I’ve heard my whole life.
Examples from the Oxford English Dictionary:
1205 - “fif fote he is deop” [It is five foot deep]
1459 - “A doore in brede iiij foote standard” [A door in breadth 4 foot standard]
1712 - “The Indigo Plant grows about two Foot high.”
Our WWI stuff has troops made up of troopers and soldiers and gunners etc. Our troops. Support troops. The troops. A trooper. Wounded troopers. Wounded gunner.
That last one perhaps help indicate where the odd usage crept in later: wounded troops includes gunners and sappers as well as troopers and soldiers.
Our troopers were camel corp and light horse (dragoons, not lancers, cuirassiers, hussars or uhlans)
for me, I started hearing ‘troop’ referring to individuals about the same time I started hearing ‘park’ referring to individual parking places (shudder), in the late 80’s.
This is not new, as the OP seems to think. As to what might have “prompted” it–it might have something to do with the restriction that the other common singular count-noun forms are specific to a particular branch of the military. A soldier is a member of the Army, but you’re supposed to refer to a member of the Navy as a sailor, of the Marines as a marine, etc. You can say “troops” (count-noun plural) to refer to any and all service members in a particular arena at a particular time, without worrying about their branch. So the media use this term as a way of being careful, and it’s become standard usage.
Furthermore, a corpus search shows that the singular count-noun use of troop is mostly either to refer to a Boy Scout or Girl Scout group, or as a header in NPs like a troop of kids, etc., referring to any collection of sentient beings. It’s rarely used to refer to a single service member. (In 2003, Larry King once asked, “Can you imagine what it’s like being a troop in Iraq,” but that’s not a common usage.)
Otherwise, the word troop mostly occurs as a non-count compound noun modifier, in terms such as troop deployments, troop strength, etc.
Trooper, on the other hand, is used in the vast majority of cases to refer to state law enforcement individuals.
These data go back about three decades.
I was career military, but rarely heard the term (probably because I was Navy). I was, however, in a Boy Scout troop at one time. I assumed it was just a shortening of the word ‘trooper’, although the majority of the time those folks were called ‘soldier’ or ‘airman’ or ‘Marine’ or ‘sailor’. Larger groups are fire teams, squads, platoons, companies, etc.
Yes. Same as in five-dollar bill, etc.
The usage which Joey P is complaining about is just a projection of that usage:*It’s a five-foot long board.
The board is five-foot long. *It’s not really such a big leap from the first to the second.
That wouldn’t surprise me. As I said, it’s something outsiders say (the media). Within a community of practice, the term would be too vague.
I think that’s all correct but the change OP refers to is calling a single service member ‘a troop’. I can’t prove and not sure Google tools prove it either but I think that one tends to be more recent.
I think the main reason is the tendency toward US (since we’re mainly talking about American English here I think) joint operations among the services in recent decades, as well as the USMC functioning as more of a de facto second Army in US wars since WWII. Therefore it’s more likely in modern military operations for there to be ‘soldiers, marines, sailors and airmen’, and a term which encompasses all four is more useful, singular as well as plural. Also ‘airman’ is gender specific so all the more reason to find an alternative in that case. At one time there was largely just an army and a navy, the operations of which were more likely to separate, and an individual participating in one or other was ‘a soldier’ or ‘a sailor’ with again the USMC a much smaller force proportionally than WWII and after, and no air service.
But I think this modern military evolution took time to fully express itself in language. The change to more frequent joint air-sea-land campaigns, large USMC and a large de facto separate air service are mainly WWII things, but I’m in my early 60’s and I believe calling a single US service person ‘a troop’ has become gradually more common in recent decades than I can remember it being at one time still long after WWII.
Could the usage of ‘troop’ as singular service member be a backformation of ‘troops’ plural?
As I said above–though it’s rarely used in the singular for this meaning.
I too was career military, and have only heard the word “trooper” (singular) in the context of ‘Airborne Troopers,’ (e.g. 82nd Airborne or 101st Airborne Division Soldiers) spoken by older-generation prior-military. For example, my uncle, 20 years ago, described himself as “. . .serving as an Airborne Trooper in Korea.” I think that phrasing died out around Vietnam, because nowadays, I’ve only heard them refer to themselves as simply “Airborne.”
I consider the use of the word “troops” as extremely lazy, and slightly offensive. I would find the use of “XX military members” more respectful. When I was deployed, I didn’t work with “troops,” I worked alongside my brother & sister Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen, and Marines. [sub]Sorry Coast Guardsmen–didn’t see you at the party. . . :([/sub]
My legitimate question/comment: Can you describe further what you mean by “the restriction?” I don’t quite follow. . . Do you mean there was some style guide or practice that might have dictated the use of “troops”? 
I think that’s why I consider the broad-brush term of “troops” as lazy–it’s too vague, and has become a buzzword. But this is a soapbox speech I’ll save for another thread.
Tripler
I was a Major, but now just an civilian Engineer. I was not, however, an English Major.
But it’s more common than it was, and seems to me what the question is effectively about, ‘when did trooper become troop?’.
The direct answer is ‘it didn’t’. A ‘trooper’ in the military (ie besides state police) was and is a member of a unit called a ‘troop’ in cavalry in US parlance*, except maybe when ‘paratrooper’ is contracted to ‘trooper’. ‘Troop’ to refer to an individual sounds like a contraction of ‘trooper’ but I don’t think it is. Rather I think it’s evolved as a way to refer to a military person without having to determine which service they are in, so usually from the outside, like media/general public. In an era where the services operate more closely, as opposed to when you pretty much knew a military person serving in a land operation was ‘a soldier’ and one serving in a sea operation as ‘a sailor’. Then it’s spread to where I believe I’ve heard/read even military people refer use ‘troop’ in the singular. A change in my lifetime, I believe.
Troops in the plural is clearly a lot older, don’t see much to discuss about that one.
*somebody else said there have been no non-cavalry units called ‘troop’ in the US military and I believe so also, but in other countries there have been non cavalry units called ‘troop’, for example in Britain units of the Royal Engineers and RAF Regiment (the ground force of the RAF, for protecting air bases).
Some really useful points and links in this thread. Thanks, all.
I mean, no offense, but I served too and this is really thin-skinned. “Troops” to describe soldiers is a term that has been used since long before you were born and which has never been meant insultingly. Some of the greatest generals in your country’s history have spoken of the “troops.” Dwight Eisenhower, whose job title was literally “Supreme Commander” and who had five stars, used the word “troops” and if it was good enough for him, it’s good enough for me.
A troop is a company size unit in the cav. Troops are made up of platoons, assuming it hasn’t changed since I got out of the cav in 85.
Yes. Also if we are going by strict definitions, “Military” should mean only the Army.
Fair points. A) I was unaware of Eisenhower using that term, and B) my distaste springs from my disdain for the laziness of the media (to include social media).
But as discussed here, not to refer to countable individual infantry soldiers (in which category I include the modern US Marines).
“The Troops” is different than “15 troops”. Eisenhower would have said “15 men” in a situation where the modern media would say “15 troops”
Airborne troopers fill the same military role as Light Horse (Dragoons) or Camel Corp. I see that in the USA, some of the cavalry units actually did become airborne units, so they would have automatically retained the same designation.