Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2024 June 26

= June 26 =

Verb for an enlisted man leaving the US Merchant Marine
Part of me thinks I'm wrong here. InedibleHulk (talk) 00:16, 26 June 2024 (UTC)
 * Part of you is right. You can only be demobilized from the armed forces. Delisted doesn't sound right either (unless you fell off a tilting ship). I'd go with "resigned", "quit", "left the service" or simply "left". Clarityfiend (talk) 06:22, 26 June 2024 (UTC)


 * "Demobilization" usually refers to a whole unit being disbanded, at the end of a war or such, not a voluntary individual resignation. AnonMoos (talk) 07:14, 26 June 2024 (UTC)
 * Several dictionaries disagree with you and say that it can be used for either a unit or a person. Clarityfiend (talk)
 * As I remember it from Robert Graves' Good-bye to All That (where he had a rather strange post-WW1 demobilization experience), an individual soldier can "be demobilized" (in the passive voice) to end his wartime service (even if his unit didn't disband), but it wasn't used in the active voice to indicate an individual soldier resigning for reasons that were unrelated to an overall decrease in the size of the military. Usage could have changed since that time, of course... AnonMoos (talk) 13:49, 26 June 2024 (UTC)
 * So the Hulk was right about being wrong twice. Clarityfiend (talk) 03:23, 27 June 2024 (UTC)
 * Rather than search for a more appropriate single word (that might not exist), why not substitute a phrase, such as (but not necessarily) "left the service"?
 * Incidentally, my understanding is that the organisation is properly called the US Merchant Marine (sing.) and that its personnel are mariners, not marines, although not all sources stick rigidly to these forms. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 151.227.226.178 (talk) 18:12, 26 June 2024 (UTC)
 * "Demobilized" suggests that the person was "mobilized" or conscripted in the first place, which seems not to have been the case here (I'm not sure that anybody could be conscripted into the merchant service). Also agree that a merchant seaman or mariner is a better description than marine which usually means a naval infantryman. Alansplodge (talk) 11:18, 27 June 2024 (UTC)
 * Thanks, everyone. It turns out "left" was the right word all along. For a dockworker, a mariner or anything. InedibleHulk (talk) 19:52, 27 June 2024 (UTC)
 * You may be thinking of the act of paying off a sailor at the end of a voyage (possibly more used in a UK/Commonwealth/naval context: see also Ship commissioning), which did not necessarily indicate a change of career. -- Verbarson talkedits 18:20, 28 June 2024 (UTC)