Military vs. Militia

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What's the difference between the military and a militia? The distinction is generally betwixt formal and regular service members and auxiliary or irregular personnel, just the latter term is less precise.

More precisely and comprehensively, the military is the entirety of a country's designated personnel, matériel (as opposed to materials), and infrastructure equally organized for defense force. A militia can be a subcategory of the military, consisting of personnel more often than not deployed only during emergencies — though in some nations, the term refers to all citizens eligible to exist called to military service — but it may refer, alternatively, to reserve forces, police force-enforcement entities, or privately financed and equipped groups.

Both words are derived from the Latin term miles, meaning "soldier": military stems from militaris, meaning "of soldiers or war," of "military machine service," or "warlike," and militia is a directly borrowing of a word meaning "military service, warfare."

Paramilitary (the prefix means "related to" or "resembling") refers to armed forces organized more or less according to military protocols merely not necessarily official or authorized. The term, like militia, is ambiguous, as it could refer, depending on the context, to a body of armed personnel ranging in degrees of legitimacy from national police to guerrillas.

Other words descended from the Latin miles include militant, in noun form referring to a (commonly unofficial) combatant or as an describing word meaning "fighting" or "aggressive" in both military machine and nonmilitary contexts, and militate. Both these words developed from the Latin discussion military "serve as a soldier," but the latter acquired a connotation of "annul" or "have a negative event on."

In the United States, the military consists of the following branches of the armed forces: the U.s. Army, the US Navy, the US Marine Corps, and the U.s. Air Strength; in fourth dimension of war, the U.s.a. Coast Guard can be attached to the navy. Subsidiary elements, considered militia, include the Army National Guard and the Air National Baby-sit, plus the Army Reserve, the Navy Reserve, the Marine Corps Forces Reserve, the Air Forcefulness Reserve, and the Declension Guard Reserve, which collectively constitute the National Guard of the United States.

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