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The term "troop" can mean a group of soldiers, or it can mean an individual soldier (perhaps in this usage it was originally short for "trooper").

In fact, in modern usage, the plural "troops" almost always refers, not to multiple groups, but to multiple individuals. "Obama's surge sent 30,000 more troops to Afghanistan" means 30,000 soldiers, not 30,000 troop-sized groups of soldiers.

Are there any other nouns like that in English, where it can refer to either a group or an individual member of that kind of group? I'd be especially interested in hearing of examples where the plural form of the noun almost always refers to individuals (not groups) in modern usage.

Spiff
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    There are lots of words that don't get conjugated to plural, lime "moose", but I feel like you are asking something else – Andrey May 07 '15 at 18:16
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    Are you sure of what you're saying? To me 30,000 troops mean 30,000 "armies". A troup is similar to platoon. – Mari-Lou A May 07 '15 at 18:29
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    @Mari-LouA The military meaning of '30,000 troops' is 30,000 soldiers. – Mitch May 07 '15 at 18:31
  • @Mitch I have never heard of a troop (a soldier) being sent to combat. And I checked the definition in one dictionary and in Wikipedia before commenting. Is this military jargon, or well known among American civilians too? – Mari-Lou A May 07 '15 at 18:35
  • @Mari-LouA Huh. I must be terribly mistaken. I saw the wiki page. I looked around the web. All these years I thought 'troops' was plural for a single soldier. But others (at least Spiff) share my definition. I wonder what's going on? – Mitch May 07 '15 at 18:37
  • @Mari-LouA Yes, in AmE (and I believe BrE), a phrase like "30,000 troops" would mean 30,000 individual soldiers. See also: http://english.stackexchange.com/questions/102500/the-use-of-troop-for-trooper-by-the-media – Spiff May 07 '15 at 18:41
  • I'm seeing definitions that have one subdefinition like 'troops = soldiers' implying that 1 troop can correspond to 1 soldier. – Mitch May 07 '15 at 18:41
  • [troops (truːps)

    Definitions plural noun

    (military) armed forces; soldiers ⇒ British troops, The next phase of the operation will involve the deployment of more than 35,000 troops from a dozen countries.](http://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/troops)

     – Mitch May 07 '15 at 18:43
  • (of course lots of other definitions which imply that 'troop' is a group of more than one soldier) – Mitch May 07 '15 at 18:43
  • I love the fact that one person commenting here only knew of the "group of soldiers" usage, and another person only knew of the "individual soldier" usage. – Spiff May 07 '15 at 18:49
  • @Andrey Yes, "troop" is a different case, because unlike "moose", it is never a "non-count/uncountable/mass" noun. "Troop" must be pluralized to "troops" to mean more than one. – Spiff May 07 '15 at 19:27
  • "Go fish." (Would words like sheep, deer, quail, and fish count?) – J.R. May 07 '15 at 19:27
  • Isn't "troop" in the singular to refer to one soldier just a shortened version of "trooper" aka a member of a "troop"? – Preston May 07 '15 at 19:31
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    @J.R. Nope, those examples can be used as "non-count" (also known as "uncountable" or "mass") nouns. "Troop" is never a non-count noun. It must be pluralized (with a trailing 's') to mean more than one troop. It's just not immediately clear without context if "troop" is being used as a group noun or not. – Spiff May 07 '15 at 19:33
  • @PrestonFitzgerald I mentioned that in my very first sentence of my original Question. BTW my question is not "How did this come about?", my question is, "Is this a unique case within the language?" – Spiff May 07 '15 at 19:37
  • You're phrasing facts in your question, that are totally incorrect. – Fattie May 07 '15 at 20:08
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    Troop doesn't mean an individual soldier. It just looks like that when troops is used as "soldiers". Troop means "a body of soldiers" itself. So you cannot say "He is a troop". I'm not sure if it is used as the shortened version of "trooper". (Trooper is derived from troop though) – ermanen May 07 '15 at 20:36
  • @ermanen I agree that "he is a troop" is awkward, but Googling for "one U.S. troop" (with the quotes) shows that it's commonly used to mean a single soldier. https://www.google.com/#q=%22one+u.s.+troop%22 – Spiff May 07 '15 at 20:59
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    @Spiff: That's weird! That usage really grates on my ears. A lot of it seems to be in news titles though, where it saves two letters on "soldier"; I wonder if this might be part of the motivation for the use (like the use of "probe" as a shorter way of saying "investigation".) – herisson May 07 '15 at 21:13
  • @Spiff: I think US news is responsible for that :) It is not common actually. Please check till the last page, you will see only 74 results. – ermanen May 07 '15 at 21:14
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    These don't exactly fit your criteria, but “Personnel” can mean both a “body of persons” or just “persons” and “Staff” can mean “a group of people who work for an organization” or, at least in Indian English, just “a person who works for an organization.” (If "staff" in the latter sense was common in American English, one could guess that it's short for "staffer" as "troop" might be for "trooper") – Papa Poule May 07 '15 at 21:31
  • @ermanen The OED apparently has attestations of "troop=soldier" as far back as 1832, but suggests it started as a military colloquialism. Perhaps the bootlicking US news media have let military slang invade their writing style. ;-) – Spiff May 07 '15 at 21:56
  • @Spiff: Wow, even OED mentions it. I have access to OED and I checked "troop" there but failed to check till the end of the page :) I think it would be nice if you add that part to your question. I think you are right, people adopted the military jargon apparently. – ermanen May 07 '15 at 22:02
  • @ermanen - "He is a troop" may sound a little awkward, but "He is a good troop" is normal parlance. – J.R. May 08 '15 at 08:40

3 Answers3

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To answer this question directly: synecdoche is a very common figure of speech:

noun

A figure of speech in which a part is made to represent the whole or vice versa

To most of us, the individual soldier (the daughter, husband, sister or father) is exceedingly more important than the rest of the troop! I perceive very conversation about the troops as a conversation about my brother.

A mother might legitimately say to her only child:

You are my brood!

A pastor might legitimately say to one of his parishioners:

Right now, you are my flock!

The rest of this answer bears more upon the flawed premise of the question. The phenomenon is actually a specialized usage of the plural form of troop with no real analogy in the singular. The plural troops can refer to a group of soldiers synecdochically in terms of its plural number:

noun

1 (troops) Soldiers or armed forces:

ODO, emphasis mine

This plural usage is common in news reports of troop deployments and movements, as in this Washington Post article:

On Jan. 10, 2007, President George W. Bush announced a dramatic shift in U.S. strategy with the deployment of 30,000 additional troops to Iraq.

Timeline: The Iraq Surge, Before and After, emphasis mine

This plural usage can create the impression that the singular troop might refer to a single soldier, because the expression 30,000 troops does, in fact, refer to 30,000 soldiers.

Also, some general expressions create the same impression with a plural usage:

"Support our Troops!"

This expression is clearly understood to mean: Support our soldiers! The analogy between the plural troops and the plural soldiers in this specialized usage generates the pseudo-impression of a potential singular usage. Although there may be rare misapplication, the singular troop is not routinely used to refer to a single soldier.

The singular troop is almost exclusively used to refer to a group:

2.0 A cavalry unit commanded by a captain.

2.1 A unit of artillery and armored formation.

2.2 A group of three or more Scout patrols.

3.0 A group of people or animals of a particular kind:
a troop of musicians

ODO

Particularly in military parlance, the plural troops does not refer to soldiers, but rather to a specific number of groups of soldiers, as seen in Remarks on the Organization of the Corps of Artillery in the British Service:

... the Corps appears to have consisted of ten Effective Battalions, one Invalid Battalion, fourteen troops of Horse Artillery, including two attached to the Rocket Service; and of twelve troops of Artillery Drivers; and to have amounted to 26,023 men, including 727 officers.

Emphasis mine

When the Random House Dictionary defines troop as "a single soldier", it is actually documenting the pseudo-impression caused by the specialized plural usage of troops:

  1. a single soldier, police officer, etc.:
    Three troops were killed today by a roadside bomb.

Dictionary.com, emphasis mine

This irregular documentation, in a less-than-prestigious dictionary, could eventually lead to a sad transforming trend, but in the singular, the expression would still be soldier or trooper, rather than troop. The singular troop does not actually reference an individual member of that kind of group, but the plural troops can reference the number of individuals in the group as a synecdoche.

ScotM
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  • I'd say that with synecdoche there's generally an awareness on the part of the speaker that they're using the term somewhat figuratively, but that doesn't seem to be happening when using "n troops" to mean "n soldiers" or when using "one U.S. troop" to mean "one U.S. soldier". As for prestigious dictionaries, the OED apparently added the "troop=soldier" sense in 1993, with attestations back to 1832. ( http://english.stackexchange.com/a/102507/1081 ). – Spiff May 07 '15 at 21:51
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    I'm glad you are looking closely @Spiff. Please, look a little closer still: "Draft Additions 1993 Chiefly in sing. [Irreg. < the collect. plural: in some cases perhaps abbrev. of Trooper n.,] A member of a troop of soldiers (or other servicemen); a soldier, a trooper. colloq. (chiefly Mil.)." The OED makes it clear that it is a limited, colloquial, collective plural usage, and that it is irregular! That is why OED is prestigious :-) – ScotM May 07 '15 at 22:06
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"The canon" can mean the body of works accepted as canonical by a group; "a canon" can mean one precept of a group; and "the canons" can mean the collection of all precepts which a group follows. In some cases, "the canon" will be the same as "the canons" of a given group, if all of their canonical works concern their canons. Of course, for many groups which have a canon, their canon is a greater collective body of works which do not solely concern their canons. But I think it's similar in usage to your "troop" example.

recognizer
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Everything you say is completely wrong. "troop" does not, particularly, mean "one person". By all means, it is occasionally used that way .. but so what?

"Are there any other nouns like that in English" Your understanding is totally incorrect. English is almost infinetly flexible.

It is absolutely, totally, completely normal to use singulars as plurals (and vice versa) in English. It's so commonplace you can't give an example. Further, "that's nothing", it's completely and totyally normal to totally transpose grammar groups in English -- to use nouns as verbs or adjectives, and so on: every possible combination.

it's just absolutely normal in English.

So in answer to your two questions (1) as it happens, you're utterly wrong about the current usual usage of troops, troop, etc. (2) it's absolutely, totally, an everyday thing to use words in "completely the unusual way" in English .. transposing between singular-plural is not even worth mentioning; absolutely bizarre transpositions are completely commonplace.

"Are there any other nouns like that in English, where it can refer to either a group or an individual member of that kind of group" ... there would be 10s of thousands of examples, and it's just of no consequence; this sort of "bending" is the norm in English.

Fattie
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    This isn't a case of using singulars as plurals, it's a case of the exact same noun being used as a countable group noun (a group noun that must be pluralized to mean more than one group) and as a countable non-group noun for members of that kind of group. "flock" never means "bird". "gang" never means "thug". "army" never means "soldier". And yet "troop" can mean "soldier". I assert that this is not synecdoche. – Spiff May 07 '15 at 20:20