Mercs

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A slang term for mercenaries, referring to individuals hired for military service who operate outside the regular armed forces
2. A colloquial term for private soldiers or fighters contracted for specific combat missions or operations
3. Informal reference to combat personnel or fighters who are employed for financial gain rather than ideological reasons

Etymology: "Mercs" is the plural of "merc," which is a clipping of "mercenary," the word for a soldier who fights for pay rather than out of loyalty to a country or cause. The shortened form drops the ending of "mercenary" and keeps the stressed beginning, a pattern common in informal English, where words such as "bike" for "bicycle" or "cab" for "cabriolet" are trimmed the same way. The "k" sound at the end of "merc" is the one oddity. Its spelling follows the sound of the ending it replaces: the "c" stands for the hard "k" sound, as in "bike," rather than the soft "s" sound of "mercenary." Trimmed words often end up with a sound that the full word does not have, so "merc" reads as a new, blunt-sounding word even though it is just the front of an older one.

Synonyms: mercenaries, soldiers of fortune