Attrition and Force Multiplier: Military Words in English

Some words arrive in everyday English by marching in from the battlefield. Read a business report and you may find attrition rates. Read a news analysis and you may find a war of attrition, attritional warfare or a force multiplier. Readers who meet these terms for the first time often guess their meaning from context and miss the specific idea behind them. This guide explains where the two best-known terms come from, what they mean in their original setting and what they mean when other fields borrow them.

Attrition: the core idea

Attrition is a word about wearing something down gradually. It comes from the Latin attrītiō, a rubbing against something, which in turn comes from a verb meaning to wear or rub away. It entered English around the fourteenth century. The picture is of friction: something is ground down a little at a time until less of it is left.

Dictionaries list several senses, and they all share that picture.

• Wearing away by friction. Rubbing or grinding that removes material, including the wear on teeth. This is the oldest and most physical sense.
• A gradual reduction in numbers. A steady loss of members, staff or participants, such as members leaving a club one after another.
• A gradual weakening. Wearing down resistance through sustained pressure, as in a war of attrition.
• A reduction in a workforce without layoffs. Wiktionary describes the human resources sense as a gradual, natural reduction in personnel, such as through retirement or resignation, and notes that it can also mean shrinking a workforce by not filling vacancies.
• A religious sense. In theology, a feeling of sorrow for wrongdoing, mainly out of fear of punishment, that falls short of full contrition. You will meet this one only in a religious or historical text.

Attrition warfare

Attrition warfare is a military strategy in which one side tries to defeat the other by gradually wearing it down. Instead of seeking a single decisive victory, the aim is to cause continuous losses in personnel, equipment and morale until the opponent can no longer fight. It is the opposite in spirit of an approach such as blitzkrieg, which aims for a quick, decisive result. Attrition relies on cumulative losses from long operations, from disrupted supplies and from falling morale.

A few related forms are worth knowing:

• A war of attrition is a conflict fought this way. It is also used figuratively for any long contest that is won by outlasting the other side. The strike became a war of attrition between the union and the company.
• Attritional is the adjective. Attritional warfare means the same as attrition warfare, and an attritional struggle is one decided by endurance. Wiktionary lists attritional among the related terms of the noun.

If you are writing in English about a long contest, you can use attrition for the process and attritional for the style. The difference is only part of speech: The campaign depended on attrition uses the noun, and It was an attritional campaign uses the adjective.

Attrition outside war

The word is now far more common in workplaces and research than on battlefields, and its meaning shifts a little with each setting.

At work. In human resources, attrition describes people leaving without being replaced. The company reduced staff through natural attrition. That means no one was dismissed, but vacancies were not filled when people retired or resigned. An attrition rate is the share of staff who leave in a period. The word is neutral, and it can sound cold to people who are leaving, so some writers prefer turnover or departures when the human side matters.

In research and education. In a study that follows people over time, attrition is the loss of participants who drop out. Attrition bias is the distortion that appears if the people who leave are different from those who stay. Wiktionary lists this among its related terms. In schools and training, attrition can describe students who leave a program before finishing.

In everyday use. A slow attrition of public trust uses the word figuratively, in the sense of gradual wearing down. Notice that the word always implies slowness and accumulation. If something is lost suddenly, attrition is the wrong choice.

Force multiplier

Force multiplier is another term that came from military writing. It names a factor, or a combination of factors, that lets people or weapons accomplish more than they could without it. The reference article explains the idea through numbers. The multiplication factor is how much larger a force without the advantage would have to be to achieve the same effect. If a navigation system lets a force do what a force five times its size could do without it, the multiplier is five.

The article lists many examples across history: fortifications, air power, communication and coordination systems, tactics, and small specialist teams that train and lead larger groups. Wiktionary defines it in a single line, as a factor that significantly increases the effectiveness of personnel, weapons or units, and gives leverage as a related term.

Outside the military, people use force multiplier for any tool, habit or person that makes a team more effective than its size would suggest.

• Good documentation is a force multiplier for a small team.
• A clear weekly plan acts as a force multiplier, because everyone stops duplicating work.
• Optimism can be a force multiplier for morale.

Use it with care. The phrase is borrowed from war, and some readers find it harsh or showy in a plain business context. Often leverage, advantage or boost says the same thing more quietly. If you do use it, be sure that the thing really multiplies something. A tool that only saves a little time is not a force multiplier.

A related word: forlorn hope

Many English phrases carry a military past. One you may meet in older writing is forlorn hope. Wiktionary records it as a phrase for an enterprise with little chance of success, and also, in its military use, a group sent on a dangerous mission. The first word, forlorn, means lost or abandoned, and it is the same word that appears in descriptions of sad and lonely moods. If you want to see how a word's meaning moves around, the guide to sad adjectives covers forlorn in a different setting.

How to use these words correctly

1. Match the size of the word to the situation. A war of attrition suits a long, exhausting contest. Using it for a small disagreement sounds exaggerated.
2. Keep attrition slow. The word means gradual wearing down. For a sudden loss, say loss, drop or departure.
3. Say what is being worn down. Attrition of staff, attrition of support, attrition of the enemy's supplies. The noun after of does the work.
4. Do not confuse it with similar words. Abrasion is the physical rubbing of a surface. Erosion is wearing away by water, wind or time. Contrition is regret for wrongdoing. Attrition sits close to the first two in meaning and shares letters with the third.
5. Prefer plainer words when the reader may not know the term. In an email to a wide audience, the gradual loss of staff is clearer than attrition.

Words like these are a good example of the way business idioms borrow from other fields, and of why reading widely teaches you more than a word list does.

Practice set

Choose the best word: attrition, attritional, force multiplier, erosion.

1. The company cut costs through natural ______ instead of layoffs.
2. The long siege became an ______ struggle, won by whoever ran out of supplies last.
3. A shared checklist is a ______ for a small team.
4. Years of rain led to the ______ of the riverbank.
5. A study loses participants who drop out over time. What is that called?
6. Which noun means the wearing down of an army over time: attrition or contrition?

Answers: 1. attrition (a gradual reduction in staff). 2. attritional (an adjective before a noun). 3. force multiplier (it makes the team more effective). 4. erosion (wearing away by water). 5. Attrition. 6. Attrition. Contrition is regret for wrongdoing.

Making it stick

Words that began in one field and moved into others are easier to remember if you keep one example from each field on the same card. Add the sentence where you first met the word, and review the card on a schedule, as how spaced repetition works explains. When you meet attrition in a news report one week and a staff memo the next, you will recognize the idea behind both.

How Wordabulary fits in

Wordabulary finds your level with a placement assessment, then gives you practice and quizzes matched to it. Word pages show definitions, example sentences and related forms, so a word such as attrition is easier to place whether you meet it in a news story or a report.