Accidental Blogger

In a previous post , I had pointed out how an event which grabs the public and media attention, can sometimes add new words to our vocabulary. Similarly, a traumatic upheaval can add new meaning or connotation to an older existing word or expression. In the last three and a half years, with two ongoing wars in far off places, we have become familiar with military terminology relating to weapons and strategy. But given the way the Iraq war has unfolded, some of the words have acquired a parenthetical double meaning, in addition to their original conventional definitions.         

Some examples of the sinister interpretations of words we have learnt:

Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD): Something that you suspect does not exist but insist on using its existence as an excuse for a war you wanted to wage all along. Repeated use, with a sombre or menacing tone, will succeed in browbeating your critics and bamboozling a frightened public.

Smoking Gun & Mushroom Cloud:  Two words from different eras – the wild west and the 1940’s, dusted out, dressed up and used in conjunction with each other to achieve the same effect as WMD.

Slam Dunk : A breezy sporting term used as a code word for an assurance that the head of your intelligence agency will play dumb when you go out and mislead the world.

Shock and Awe: A shameless boast by an invading power of far superior strength, describing the ease of destroying a weak enemy, using the terminology of juvenile video games, making no mention of the numerous civilian deaths that will result from the action.

Embedded Reporters: Reporters in the war zone who would supposedly report fairly and accurately about events they experience first hand. But you hope and you know that many of them will become your cheerleaders because they will identify so closely with the action they cover (while you oversee their safety under enemy fire), that they will not bother asking pointed questions about your method or motive. 

IED and RPG: Improvised Explosive Device and Rocket Propelled Grenade.  The real threat to our soldiers, unlike the mythical WMD, that you did not tell us would be out there.

All the above serious and consequential words and acronyms are used in their correct grammatical context vis-a-vis their intended and unintended meanings. There is a more innocuous word that to my irritation, is repeatedly misused by the media nowadays. We hear on a regular basis that three, two or even one "troops /troop" have /has been killed in the war. What they mean is one, two or three soldiers/marines/ reservists have (has) died. The word troop represents a "group" of soldiers, scouts or mammals involved in a common activity. While the word is not as precise as company, brigade, battalion or division, it clearly denotes a set of multiple members. I don’t know when and how this common collective noun got subverted to mean individuals and why no one corrected its wrong usage. Now it has gained such wide currency in its flawed form that I expect to hear a child, five or ten years from now, to answer, "I want to be a troop (in the army, navy, air force or the marines)", in answer to the question, "What do you want to be when you grow up?"