To Attrit or Not To Attrit
To Attrit or Not To Attrit
Does it mean to quit the grind, or does it refer to the grind itself?
Is attrit a real word? HR seems to think so. Attrition means employees leaving a company. From time to time I hear people use the word attrit as a verb—or even as a noun.
Wiktionary defines attrit to mean quit or drop out, but that's the second definition. The first is wear down. In fact, attrition, which has been with us from the 1540s, means abrasion or scraping. It comes from the Latin attritio, from atterere, meaning wear away or rub away.
In a military sense, the US uses attrit to mean weaken an opponent through sustained action. This sense of the word is a back-formation from attrition, coined by the US Air Force in 1956. So, while attrition has been with us for a long time, the verb attrit is fairly new.
In the world of work, an attrit is someone who leaves a company, whether voluntarily or involuntarily. To attrit in this context means to quit or be fired. HR and staffing departments, in their quest to retain employees, work to reduce regretted attrition, which means it was the attrit's decision rather than the company's.
An attritee means the same thing as an attrit—but an attritor is a type of grinder that breaks up particles by suspending them in a liquid, mixed with a grinding medium. As the particles are moved about by paddles, they are reduced by bumping into the grinding medium and each other. Interestingly, this is how some attritees probably view their workplace.
Merriam-Webster claims the first use of attrit was around 1648, but I couldn't corroborate it. Dictionary.com shows a word attrite, meaning the same thing, and attests to its entry into English in the early 1600s. Collins English Dictionary shows attrit used as early as 1750. But these words all seem to have the sense of a wearing down, or a decrease in size or number, rather than the military sense of a loss of personnel.