A troop of Buffalo Soldiers from the U.S. 10th Cavalry Regiment, c. 1898
28 August 2024
A troop is a unit of people, most often soldiers, especially a unit of cavalry, but it is also used for other groups of people collected in bands, such as entertainers (in which case it is usually spelled troupe). It is also used for a group of animals, especially apes or monkeys. The plural troops is used to refer to soldiers generally, and colloquially the singular troop is sometimes used to refer to a single soldier, although trooper would be more common.
The word is borrowed from the French trope or troupe, which in turn is from the Latin troppus (flock). The word appears in English in a letter written by Viscount John Lisle to King Henry VIII in 1545:
The maner wherof, with allso our mercheng by lande towardes Treportt, styll in the face of your enymyes, who assemblyd more and more in gret troupes, and now and then, with some horsemen, sceirmished with us, as they dyrste.
And it appears as a verb in a 1565 thesaurus:
Agglomero, ágglómeras, pen. cor. agglomerâre, Ex Ad & Glomero. To make vppe on a heape: to folde vp in a botome: as threed: to prease or gather thicke to gether, as souldiours doe: to trowpe.
By 1590, it is being used specifically to refer to a unit of cavalry, a sense that is still in use in the U.S. Army today, although nowadays the horses have been exchanged for tanks and helicopters. From John Smythe’s Certain Discourses of that year:
By reason, that through the lacke of certaine pay, and no hope of reward for extraordinary deserts, it hath come to passe, that the souldiors thereby being made voluntary, haue obeyed their Captaines no otherwise than hath pleased themselues, altering and changing their weapons, as also themselues out of one band into an other, and sometimes horsemen to become footemen, and footemen to become horsemen; besides their forraging and stragling from their Ensignes without order; as also their negligence and lacke of vigilancie in their watches, bodies of watches and centinels, and by disordering themselues vpon euery light occasion both in battallion, squadron and troupe.
And the plural form, used to denote soldiers generally, is in place by the end of the sixteenth century. From Robert Barret’s 1598 The Theorike and Practike of Moderne Warres, writing of the soldiers serving the Spanish crown:
In his brables in Britayn; besides the incredible nu[m]ber of his pistolets continually flying in (almost) euery nation, to infect, corrupt, and pierce the mindes, hearts, and soules of good Princes subiectes, to their Princes annoyance, and their owne confusion in fine. Italy, Fraunce, and Flanders, too full of his pencionary troupes: I pray God, that other nations tast not of his infection.
Trooper, referring to a single cavalry soldier, is in place by the middle of the seventeenth century. Here we see it in a record of what cavalry soldiers in the Scottish Covenanters Army of 1640 should be paid:
The quhilk day the Committie ordaines, that, the troupe horss to be leviat furth of the Stewartrie for the service of the publict. That, the worste horss be worthe jc. lib. Monie, and whar horss are better to be apprysed be the Committie according to thair worthe, and the siller peyit thairon, aither in monie or security. And ordaines, that ilk trouper have for the twa pairt of the 40 dayes lone appoyntit be the Committie of Estaites xviij libs., conforme to the general order; and that ilk horsman have for arms, at the leist, ane steill cape and sworde, ane paire of pistolles, and ane lance, and for fornishing thairof, ordaines to be given xx rex dollares.
And by the mid twentieth century, trooper had also come to be used to refer to any stalwart person. Here is an example from poet Roy Campbell’s 1952 autobiography:
I always liked Stuart because he was generous with money, tough and independent. He trusted one and one trusted him. We were all like that, Nina Hammet (she was a find trouper), Rowley Smart, Betty May, Joseph Kramer, and all the other penniless bohemians of whom I as the only one ever to raise any spare cash—by working at sea, or from my indulgent parents at home who always spoilt me.
And the singular troop, referring to a single soldier, makes its appearance in the nineteenth century. From a passage in Basil Hall’s 1832 Fragments of Voyages and Travels in which the author describes an incident when a naval ship’s pet monkey took revenge upon a marine who had been abusing it:
Next morning the monkey stowed himself away behind the pumps, till the same marine passed; he then sprung out, and laid hold of him by the calf of the leg; and, in spite of sundry kicks and cuffs, never once relaxed his jaws till the teeth met amongst what the loblolly boy, in the pride of his anatomical knowledge, called the “gastrocnemii muscles” of his enemy's leg. The cries of murder! from the soldier brought the marines, and many of the sailors, under the half-deck to the poor fellow's rescue, while the author of the mischief scuttled off amongst the men's feet, chattering and screaming all the way. He was not again seen during two or three days; at the end of which, as the wounded “troop” was not much hurt, a sort of truce was proclaimed between the red and the blue factions of the ship.
Sources:
Barret, Robert. The Theorike and Practike of Moderne Warres. London: William Posonby, 1598, 136. ProQuest: Early English Books Online.
Campbell, Roy. Light on a Dark Horse: An Autobiography. Chicago: Henry Regnery, 1952, 208. Archive.org.
Cooper, Thomas. Thesaurus Linguae Romanæ and Britannicæ. London: Berthelet, 1565, sig. F2r., s.v. agglomero. ProQuest: Early English Books Online.
Hall, Basil. Fragments of Voyages and Travels, second series, vol. 2 of 3. Edinburgh: Robert Cadell, 1832, 124–25. HathiTrust Digital Archive.
Lisle, John (later styled John Dudley, Earl of Warwick). Letter to Henry VIII (1545). State Papers (Henry VIII), vol. 1. Commission for Printing and Publishing State Papers, 829. 1830. Google Books.
Minute Book Kept by the War Committee of the Covenanters in the Stewartry of Kirkcudbright, in the Years 1640 and 1641. Kirkcudbright, Scotland: J. Nicholson, 1855, 1–2. HathiTrust Digital Archive.
Oxford English Dictionary, second edition, 1989, s.v. trooper, n., troop, v.; additions series, 1993, s.v. troop, n.
Smythe, John. Certain Discourses. London: Richard Johnes, 1590, 2r. ProQuest: Early English Books Online.