622 - Is a Troop One Person or a Group? Repetition
Grammar Girl: For Writers and Language Lovers.
Mignon Fogarty, Inc.
4.5 • 2.9K Ratings
🗓️ 24 May 2018
⏱️ 14 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Is a troop one person or a group, and what's up with obviously repetitive phrases such as "It is what it is"?
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Troops: http://bit.ly/troop-troops
Repetition: http://bit.ly/drink-drink
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Grimmer Girl here, I'm Minion Fogarty. |
| 0:07.3 | This week I have a meeting middle by Neil Whitman about why the word troops can refer to the |
| 0:12.1 | number of individuals or the number of groups. |
| 0:16.0 | And it tipped it from Edwin Battistella about repetitive phrases such as, it is what it |
| 0:21.3 | is. |
| 0:22.3 | A lot of people have written to me about phrases like that over the years. |
| 0:26.2 | But one quick announcement before we get to troops. |
| 0:29.0 | If you'd like an ad-free version of this podcast and a monthly bonus episode, we're now |
| 0:34.2 | doing that through Stitcher Premium. |
| 0:36.8 | Get a free trial at StitcherPremium.com slash Grimmer and use the offer code grammar. |
| 0:42.4 | And now onto the show. |
| 0:46.4 | Memorial Day is next week when we in the US honor members of the military who've died in |
| 0:51.8 | the line of duty. |
| 0:53.4 | So in today's episode, I'll answer a question some readers have had about the word troops. |
| 0:59.0 | Alicia writes, I have a question about the use of the word troops to mean individual soldiers. |
| 1:05.7 | For the longest time when I heard a phrase like, the president is asking Congress to send |
| 1:11.2 | 10,000 more troops, I thought the speaker meant that 10,000 troops of soldiers were being |
| 1:16.9 | sent. |
| 1:18.3 | Then in my mind, I would try to calculate how many individual soldiers that would actually |
| 1:23.0 | mean. |
| 1:24.4 | Eventually, I realized that the word troop is being used to mean individual soldiers. |
| 1:30.0 | And I wonder why we don't just say soldiers. |
... |
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