Personnel (word)

Personnel is an English noun.

Meaning

Personnel means “people who are employed by an organisation or are otherwise engaged in a particular activity.” It generally encompasses all individuals who work for or are associated with an organisation, including employees, staff, and sometimes volunteers.

Form

This is typically treated as a plural count noun. However, it doesn’t contain a plural suffix such as plural -s (*personnels). Second, it’s rarely, if ever, used, in the singular, i.e. we don’t usually say ^?a personnel or ^?one personnel, or use the personnel when referring to one individual. It can be used as a noun adjunct (which usually has the base form of a noun), e.g. personnel records.

This makes it unusual amongst English nouns. It’s different to an uncountable plural like clothes, because it can be counted. It’s not a collective noun because collective nouns can’t usually be counted. Can you think of any others like it?

Personnel shouldn’t be confused with the adjective personal. In French, the word personnel means both “personal” (as an adjective) and “personnel” (as a noun). French grammar treats personnel as a standard masculine collective noun.

Pronunciation

Personnel is pronounced as /ˌpɜ:(r).sən.ˈel/ with the stress pattern OoO, i.e. primary stress on the final syllable, and secondary stress on the antepenultimate (i.e. first) syllable.

Note that this is different to personal, which has the stress pattern Ooo, with its final syllable reduced: /ˈpɜ:(r).sən.əl/.

Spelling

The spelling of personnel is a little unusual insofar as it follows French spelling patterns. Note again, the difference with personal which has the {-al} suffix; personnel takes its French cognate {-el}.

Pedagogy

EFL learners may be inclined to pluralise this as *personnels.

It might be pointed out this is related to other “strange words” person and people.