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troop

nounverbcommon in dialogue

  • United Kingdom//tɹuːp//
  • United Kingdom//tɹʉwp//
  • United States//tɹup//
  • Australia//tɹʉːp//
  • Scotland//tɾʉp//

A collection of people; a number; a multitude (in general).

noun

  1. 1

    A collection of people; a number; a multitude (in general).

    That which should accompany old age — / As honour, love, obedience, troops of friends — / I must not look to have.

  2. 2

    A collection of people; a number; a multitude (in general). A small unit of cavalry or armour commanded by a captain, corresponding to a platoon or company of infantry.

  3. 3

    A collection of people; a number; a multitude (in general). A detachment of soldiers or police, especially horse artillery, armour, or state troopers.

  4. 4

    A collection of people; a number; a multitude (in general). A group of soldiers; military forces.

    Ah, knovv you not the Citie fauours them, / And they haue troupes of Souldiers at their beck?

    Farewell the plumed troop, and the big wars.

    His troops moved to victory with the precision of machines.

  5. 5

    A collection of people; a number; a multitude (in general). A company of actors; a troupe.

    In order to form the new troop to a greater degree of perfection, the four principal actors were placed in the seminary of the cadets

  6. 6

    A collection of people; a number; a multitude (in general). A chapter of a national girl or boy scouts organization, consisting of one or more patrols of 6 to 8 youngsters each.

    Lord Baden-Powell of Gilwell (1920), Aids To Scoutmastership, page 6: “It is the Patrol System that makes the Troop, and all Scouting for that matter, a real co-operative effort.”

  7. 7

    An individual soldier or member of a military force; a trooper.

    One American M48 was slightly grazed and one American troop lightly wounded.

    Although the mission failed, at least 5 ISIL militants were killed, however 1 American troop was wounded. According to the reports, Jordan had a role in the operation and that one Jordanian soldier had been wounded as well.

    2022, CNN, First Russian troop to speak out publicly against Putin’s war. Hear what he has to say (archived)

  8. 8

    A group of animals. A group of primates (lemurs, monkeys and apes).

  9. 9

    A group of animals. A group of meerkat families living together.

    troop of meerkats is usually made up of two or three family groups.

  10. 10

    A group of mushrooms that are close but not close enough to be called a cluster.

  11. 11

    A particular roll of the drum; a quick march.

Etymology

Attested in English since 1545, from French troupe, from Back-formation from troupeau, from Middle French trope, troupe, from Old French trope, trupe, of unknown origin. Compare Early Medieval Latin troppus. Doublet of troupe, and possibly also of thorp, dorp, and trip. Cognate with German Dorf (“village”).

verb

  1. 1

    To move in numbers; to come or gather in crowds or troops.

    Then everybody once more knelt, and soon the blessing was pronounced. The choir and the clergy trooped out slowly, […], down the nave to the western door. […] At a seemingly immense distance the surpliced group stopped to say the last prayer.

  2. 2

    To march on; to go forward in haste.

  3. 3

    To move or march as if in a crowd.

    The children trooped into the room.

Forms

plural
troops
past tense
trooped
past participle
trooped
present participle
trooping
third person singular
troops
The neighbouring pagesAlphabetical order follows the rules of the language, not byte values: an accent decides only between two otherwise identical words, and Spanish files Ñ as a letter of its own.

Lexical content from Wiktionary, under CC BY-SA 4.0 · Source entry · Data version 2026-08-23

Rank among the words of the OpenSubtitles 2018 corpus — film and television subtitles, so spoken rather than written usage (CC BY-SA 3.0).