| 词组 | personnel |
| 释义 | personnel 1. This word seems to have been introduced into English in its present meaning by John Stuart Mill in 1837; it is originally French, and as late as 1947 The Times of London was railing at "this alien collective." It was listed with parallel bars as a foreign term in Webster 1890 and in the OED in 1905, but was accepted as English in Webster 1909 and the 1933 OED Supplement. Sir Ernest Gowers still felt the need to defend the word against attack as an objectionable neologism in his 1965 revision of Fowler. There has been some confusion about the number of the verb used with personnel. It appears to have been originally considered a singular, much like staff, but later became conceived of as one of those pesky collective nouns (like committee) that take a singular verb when thought of as a unit and a plural verb when thought of as a number of individuals. From the use with a plural verb, personnel came to be viewed as a noun with a plural meaning "persons," or more precisely, "persons of a particular group." Around the end of World War II, this sense began to be used occasionally with a preceding number: • Japanese figures show they lost a total of 276,000 personnel —Chester W. Nimitz, National Geographic, June 1946 • The bank's staff in August 1948 consisted of about 435 personnel —Collier's Year Book, 1949 • ... a land Army ... with a total strength of 34,400 personnel—Statesman's Year-Book, 1957 This use, which appears to be of American origin, has been disapproved by a number of commentators, such as Bernstein 1962, Harper 1975, 1985, and Longman 1984. Copperud 1964 defends it: • It is a puristic fiction that the word cannot be preceded by a number, although, since it is a plural, one would not speak of one personnel.... Phrases like three military personnel are irreproachable and convenient. Convenience does seem to be one of the reasons for the continuation of the usage. Here, for example, is part of a report on a bomb explosion in Melbourne, Australia: • Most of the injured, who included 12 police personnel, suffered cuts and abrasions from flying glass. A policewoman with burns covering 80 percent of her body was the only victim listed in serious condition —International Herald Tribune (UPI), 28 Mar. 1986 Here the reporter, by using personnel, avoided a possible uncertainty about the propriety of 12 police; avoided policemen, which would have been inaccurate; avoided police officers, perhaps not used in Australia; and avoided policemen and policewomen. Convenience of expression may be noted in this next example, too: • College store retailers must have felt the lure of Boston's historic attractions because a record 1717 store personnel turned out for the four-day event —Publishers Weekly, 7 May 1982 The usage seems at present to be confined to journalistic publications and others in which statistics appear frequently. 2. See personal 2. |
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