Trooper vs Troop

[GreenWyvern]

@Melbourne

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”

You must have missed my citation of this kind of usage from 1853.

“Three of the Government troops were killed and five wounded.”

This is NOT a new usage.

[GreenWyvern]

So let’s review what we know, kids!

Troop to mean a group of people is very old.

A troop of gypsies
A troop of angels
Troops of friends
A troop (or troupe) of actors -> ‘trouper’ = a capable and reliable actor
From that we get a more formal military usage:

A troop of cavalry = a cavalry unit of a certain size
-> ‘trooper’ as a military designation, a member of a cavalry (or cavalry-derived) military troop
-> trooper shortened to ‘troop’, as in a Sgt-major addressing a trooper as “Troop!”
Related: a troop of boy scouts
Troops as a general term for soldiers - very old - from the 16th century.

“Our troops set forth tomorrow.” - Shakespeare
“Certain sums of money to raise troops.” - 1732
“It was a war of native and self-paid troops against troops foreign and purchased.” - 1835
“The courage displayed by our troops.” - 1854
“The procession followed the troop-lined route.” - 1889
Troop-carrier - WWII
Troops as individuals:

“I may say … that 16,000 Hanoverians newly raised, are not so good as 16,000 of the Veteran Troops.” - 1743
“200 Troops from North Carolina” - 1757
“As the wounded ‘troop’ was not much hurt, a sort of truce was proclaimed.” - 1832 [referring to a single marine, not a trooper]
“Three of the Government troops were killed and five wounded.” - 1853
“One of the troops was severely handled, being beaten with clubs, and two others received shot wounds.” - 1874
“Can you spare a bite for a front-line troop?” - 1947
See:

Oxford English Dictionary

On “Troop” and Troops"

Troop of one

[Hari_Seldon]

@yearofglad

I’ve only ever heard (and assumed) “troop” to mean an individual rather than a group of soldiers.

I was going to ask if you could point to a usage of the word “troop” meaning a group of soldiers, but I guess maybe “F-Troop” would be a good example? (It’s before my time.)

So was it common usage then (in the late '60s) for “Troop” to mean a group?

I think when you write 200-inch telescope, “200-inch” is an adjective and sounds totally normal to me (a native English speaker). I think that’s different than saying “six head of cattle” or “those posts are 6 foot long,” although I’ve never heard the latter of those. But I think if you said they are 6-foot posts, that would be grammatically correct (in English).

"
When a noun modifies another noun (e.g “water meter”) it is called attributive and there are special laws about attributives. One is that they are invariable. So “six foot post” and “200 inch telescope”. Another is that they are stressed. Example (which happens to be factual): “The BROWN building on the McGill campus is a brown BUILDING.”

As far as the OP, let me add my feeling that in the US “trooper” invariably means a state policemen. I don’t believe I have ever heard the word used in Canada. Certainly not to refer to a provincial cop. Maybe, just maybe, for an RCMP officer.

[DinoR]

@Corry_El

‘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.

That change seems to fit my experience in the time frame of 1988 when I started ROTC through retirement in 2015. I wont say I never heard it earlier but it didn’t seem common until later. “Soldier, Sailor, Airman, or Marine” is a mouthful even if it is accurate. SM (Service Member) is a lesser mouthful and pretty generic outside of official correspondence. I saw some use of pax (abbreviated passenger) used outside of it’s literal meaning in the transportation side. With deployments ramping up it was understood even if “1 pax from each (subunit) for a detail” didn’t really refer to passengers. Using troop in that context started to happen.

It was coming out of the mouths of people that really hadn’t spend a lot of time around my mounted brethren before they were exposed to me in my tanker boot wearing, horse metaphor spewing reality. The kind of Soldiers who probably hadn’t used or heard someone referenced as a trooper in person were saying troop. That makes me lean towards them not picking it up as a shortened version of trooper. Which doesn’t mean it wasn’t the origin. I still wouldn’t just assume it was.

[Leo_Bloom]

@HMS_Irruncible

I regularly heard “troop” to refer to individuals when I was in Army AIT in 1990. Drill sergeants would commonly use it like “hey troop, what are you doing, get over here”, etc. It was never confusing; when they were yelling at me I never thought to look over my shoulder to see if a company-sized cavalry unit was goofing off behind me.

Edit: this was medical AIT, not cavalry, so I have no idea where this came from. The military culture of that whole 1973-1990 era seems to have more or less disappeared due to lack of popular interest in it, at least compared to other eras.

“AIT”?

[DinoR]

@Leo_Bloom

“AIT”?

Advanced Individual Training

It’s US Army speak for where enlisted soldiers learn their MOS (Military Occupational Specialty) after Basic Combat Training. You learn tasks common to all Soldiers at Basic then go to AIT to learn to be a medic, cook, truck driver, generator mechanic, etc. Combined BCT and AIT are the two phases of IET (Initial Entry Training). For some MOSs they are combined together at the same post, within the same unit, with the same training cadre. Combined like that they are then are called OSUT (One Station Unit Training.)

There’s an [del]app[/del] acronym for that.

[Boozahol_Squid_P.I]

@rsat3acr

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.

You’re quite right. My brains have gotten soft since hung up my spurs in '13.

[Ashtura]

The only organization I’ve heard troop commonly used for a group of people, in my lifetime, was the Boy Scouts.

[TRC4941]

@Dr.Drake

Okay. Perhaps I should rephrase:

In military usage, a “troop” used to be a group of soldiers; “troops,” then, meant groups of soldiers.

Now, “troop” seems to be only used for individial soldiers.

When did it stop referring to a group? Or does it still, and it’s just clear from context?

As for the use of the singular for the plural (outside of adjectives as in “four-foot post”), like six head of cattle, I think that’s a different linguistic phenomenon, and restricted to certain nouns. I say “two pair of pants” because “two pairs” sounds wrong, but most people I know say “two pairs.”

I’m with you! It doesn’t make sense that a troop is one person. To me, a troop is a group of soldiers. I seemed to have noticed it within the last 10 years or so. Maybe I just started to pay attention. But I’ve never heard of a soldier being referred to as a trooper (other than paratrooper) either.