A peloton of bicyclists. A pack of cyclists on a leg of the 2005 Tour de France. Lance Armstrong is in the center of the photo, wearing the yellow jersey. Armstrong would win the tour, his seventh victory in the race, only to later have the title stripped from him because of doping.
8 February 2022
A platoon is a small unit of soldiers. In early English use, it referred to a detachment of musketeers that could be used to strengthen weak points in a defense, but in current use platoon refers to an infantry unit, which in the US Army consists of about thirty-five soldiers, divided into three squads, and led by a lieutenant. In non-infantry units, a platoon is a similarly sized unit; an artillery platoon, for example, might consist of three howitzers and their crews, and an armor platoon might consist of four tanks and their crews.
Like many military terms, platoon comes into English from French, specifically the French peloton, literally meaning a little ball. The literal sense of peloton appears in Middle French by 1417, and by 1572 the variant ploton was being used to refer to a unit of soldiers, a small “ball” of soldiers. Both forms were borrowed into English, and ploton was further transformed into platoon.
Platoon, with the spelling platton, appears in English by 1547 when Edward Seymour, lord protector of England during the minority of his nephew King Edward VI, used it in a description of military organization:
These Squadrons make up a Brigade, to be drawn up as followeth, viz. Ten Corporalships of Musqueteers being 34 Rots, divided into five Plattons, every Platton being nine or so in front, led by a Major, and every division by a sufficient Commander.
The platoon spelling is in place by the beginning of the eighteenth century when it, along with peloton, appears in a 1702 military dictionary:
Platoon, or rather Peloton. A small square Body of Musketiers, such as is us’d to be drawn out of a Batallion of Foot, when they form the hollow Square to strengthen the Angles. The Granadiers are generally thus posted. Peloton is the French Word, from which we took it, and the vulgar corruption has brought it to be pronounc’d Platoon.
Military use of peloton faded away in favor of platoon, but the French word was reintroduced into English via the world of cycling, where it refers to the main pack of cyclists in a race, a metaphorical “ball” of racers. This use appears by 1893 when it is used in a description of a bicycle race in Paris:
No sooner, however, had the pacemakers, Girardot and Willaume on their tandem, taken the lead, than the pace was quickened, and Stéphane, Huzelstein, and Lumsden led the “peloton” round the third lap in 31 1-5sec.
Sources:
“Cycling in Paris.” New York Herald (European Edition, Paris), 25 September 1893, 3. Gale Primary Sources: International Herald Tribune Historical Archive, 1887–2013.
A Military Dictionary. Explaining All Difficult Terms in Martial Discipline, Fortification, and Gunnery. London: J. Nutt, 1702, s.v. platoon. Eighteenth Century Collections Online (ECCO).
Oxford English Dictionary, third edition, September 2005, s.v. peloton, n.; June 2006, platoon, n.
Seymour, Edward (1547). In David Lloyd. State-Worthies, or, the States-Men and Favourites of England Since the Reformation. London: Thomas Milbourne for Samuel Speed, 1670, 174. Early English Books Online (EEBO).
Photo credit: anonymous photographer, 2005. Public domain photo.