Today's Word "cadre"
Published in Vocabulary
cadre \KAD-ree; -ray; KAH-dray; -druh\ (noun) - 1 : A core or nucleus of trained or otherwise qualified personnel around which an organization is formed. 2 : A tightly knit and trained group of dedicated members active in promoting the interests of a revolutionary party. 3 : A member of such a group. 4 : A framework upon which a larger entity can be built; a scheme.
"Slyboots, our cousin, built ultralights on the reservation and hoped the cadre might order thousands of them and make him rich and famous..." -- Gerald Robert Vizenor, 'Chancers'
Upon entering the English language around 1830 via Sir Walter Scott's Introduction to The Lay of the Last Minstrel, this word first meant "framework," and by the 1850s was a term for a group of people. It was borrowed from the French cadre, "a picture frame," from Italian quadro, "framework," from Latin quadrum, "square, four-sided thing."
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