Q: I recently came across the word summat in Agatha Christie's book Dead Man's Folly. On searching for its meaning, I couldn't find it in Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary. Why not?

A: Although the word summat is not entered in any of our smaller dictionaries, it is entered in Webster's Third New International Dictionary, Unabridged, defined as a dialectical variant of "somewhat."

Since we are an American publisher, our dictionaries focus primarily on American English and provide a record of those words that have demonstrated frequent and consistent usage especially in American English. A survey of usage shows that summat occurs quite rarely in most English-language publications and is restricted mostly to certain dialects of British English; for that reason it is not entered in our smaller dictionaries. However, we will continue to monitor usage of this word so that its entry can be considered for future editions.

Q: I was checking the definition of acronym on your site, and I'm wondering if  it is correct. The definition is: “a word (as NATO, radar, or snafu) formed from the initial letter or letters of each of the successive parts or major parts of a compound term; also : an abbreviation (as FBI) formed from initial letters : INITIALISM.”

I believe FBI and possibly the other examples are not technically acronyms, since acronyms must spell a word.  FBI would be more an initialism.

A: You are in agreement with some usage commentators in believing that acronyms can be differentiated from other abbreviations in being pronounceable as words. But, as Merriam-Webster's Dictionary of English Usage observes, "Dictionaries...do not make this distinction...and the general public does not either."

The Usage Dictionary article goes on to note that one commentator divides acronyms into initialisms, which consist of initial letters pronounced with the letter names, and word acronyms, which are pronounced as words. However, initialism, an older word than acronym, seems to be too little known to the general public to serve as the customary term standing in contrast with acronym.

You, of course, can choose to employ any of the three terms to designate something an abbreviation, acronym, or initialism, but the more common usage is to use the broader term.

Q: I work in Administration in the Navy and would like to know if the word personnel may be singular. For example, would it be correct to write “The following personnel is authorized to...” when referring to one person?  Please keep in mind that the use of the word person would be too informal for military use.

A: We don't have evidence for personnel being used to mean one person. As a collective noun, it refers to a body of persons working together. In that sense, it behaves much like the word staff. Personnel is also used as a plural noun to mean "persons." It this sense, it appears in constructions such as "20,000 personnel were deployed." This is closer to what you are looking for in meaning, but obviously, since it is plural, it would not be appropriate to use for one person.

Q: The newspaper headline reading “8 US Troops Killed” left my husband and me wondering whether troop really refers to a single soldier.

A: Although one sees troops used with numbers all the time, as in such headlines, the implied singular troop/soldier is an odd-sounding entity and not accepted as standard. Consider the following: "The Iraqi girl was talking to an American troop who was giving her a candy bar." If that sentence ended after "troop," it would sound like she was talking to a group of soldiers. As it is now, it sounds strange, not much better than "My son is a troop in the 384th Expeditionary Force."

We’d summarize the matter this way: use of troop with a number is indeed headlinese, and while it's unlikely to go away, it will sound strange to many people’s ears.

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