By PHILIP OCHIENGMore by this AuthorThe nouns “officer” and “official” may be interchanged. Yet, elsewhere in the English-speaking world, the word officer is increasingly confined to such security individuals as soldiers and police persons. “Contrariwise” – as one hilarious English novelist used to quip - you can also be an officer even if you have never touched a gun in your life. Yet even such a self-evident terminological contradiction as an “officer in the field” never seems to occur to the leaders of the human world who appoint them. In every human community, even merely nominal positions (far away from any real office buildings) has come to be called an “office” and its occupant an “officer” , even an “official”.

Source: Daily Nation April 12, 2019 21:56 UTC