TroopWord for the Wise June 22, 2007 Broadcast Topic: Troop More than one person has asked for the story behind the word troop.
In short, the question comes down to this: if the plural troops is synonymous with the plural soldiers, is the singular troop the same as the singular soldier?
(来源：2HZZ常识网 http://www.
2hzz.
com) The answer is: not really, although you couldn't tell that by the headlines, which commonly feature such phrasing as Three Troops Killed.
Troop is a linguistic oddity; it sometimes functions as a count noun and sometimes as a non-count noun.
Like snow and money, troop is a non-count noun; it is often used attributively (like an adjective) before another noun (think troop level, troop count, or troop movement, for example).
When used in this non-count sense, troop refers to a collection of people, usually a military unit.
But of course, troops also acts as a count noun plural, meaning soldiers, as in three troops.
What makes this even more complicated is that troop can be pluralized to mean a number of units of soldiers, as when we hear The army sent three troops of MPs to the border.
But troop is not generally considered a singular count noun and using it that way is not considered standard (except, perhaps, in headlines).