A new term was needed some decades ago. "man" titles have not been politically correct for a while, "member" sounds awkward and bureaucratic. In some other languages, "soldier" can be used for all military personnel, while English ended up with a more narrow meaning.

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applfanboysbgon 21 hours ago | parent | next [-]

"Awkward and bureacratic" is literally the point of naming conventions commonly adopted by democracies. Titles like "president" or "prime minister", departments like "Department of Defense", referring to government employees as "civil servants", etc. are all intentional measures meant to strip away the prestige and egotism associated with positions of authority in an effort to avoid it going to people's heads, and to remind them that they are meant to serve the good of the public that pays for their existence rather than ruling over them.

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jltsiren 20 hours ago | parent [-]

"Service member" is awkward, because it has too many syllables. People won't use it when shorter alternatives are available. And it's bureaucratic because it's unspecific. It doesn't tell anything the service those people are members of, and it doesn't tell what kind of work they do.

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jrmg 20 hours ago | parent | next [-]

It has one more syllable than ‘warfighter’, which also doesn’t do any of the things you said.

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nostromo 19 hours ago | parent [-]

I'm not sure how much more clear warfighter could be. "One who fights wars."

Service member is extremely vague. "A member of a service."

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queenkjuul 18 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Growing up, "the service" was synonymous with "the military" among my grandparents who, y'know, fought in WWII

	▲	jltsiren 15 hours ago \| parent [-]
		The world wars were an unusual period. When I grew up, "veteran" usually meant an old man. Most men in my grandparents' generation had seen combat.

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falcor84 17 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Except for extreme periods in history (that I hope we can avoid), most service members don't end up directly participating in a war.

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tbrownaw 19 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

> It doesn't tell anything the service those people are members of, and it doesn't tell what kind of work they do.

I'm pretty sure that term could even work for the Pods in some of my Deployments.

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20 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

[deleted]