Borrowed fromFrenchpeloton(“small ball (of thread, etc.), pellet; (cycling) group of riders formed during a cycling road race; (military) small group of soldiers, platoon”), frompelote(“small ball (of thread, etc.)”) (ultimately fromLatinpila(“ball; ball game; globe, sphere”) (probably referring to a ball of hair), frompilus(“strand of hair”), fromProto-Indo-European*pil-(“strand of hair”)) +-on(augmentativesuffix).[1]Doublet ofplatoon.
For the most part, though, the good stuff did not come in following a break of three riders, nor sitting 20 metres in front of thepeloton watching its arrow head glide across the plains of south-west France. It was at the back of thepeloton, in the engine room, where things really got interesting. It is a remarkable thing, thepeloton. In the distance, or from the aerial shots showing it stretching and contracting, or splitting down the middle to allow it to flow smoothly around a roundabout, the 175 individual cyclists resemble a single unit, a fluid, malleable whole.
The summit of the climb came 38km from the end of stage 14, which began in Limoux and ended in Foix in the foothills of the Pyrenees, and the incident occurred as thepeloton emerged into the light and passed under the banner at the top, a quarter of an hour behind a five-man breakaway.
(military, chiefly historical)Synonym ofplatoon(“a small group ofsoldiers”) orsynonym ofsection(cognate with the former; not invariably synonymous with it, depending on century of use)
And so here, I suppose you intend to make a stand against your followers, Ranald—voto a Dios, as the Spaniard says—a very pretty position—as pretty a position for a smallpeloton of men as I have seen in my service—no enemy can come towards it by the road without being at the mercy of cannon and musket.
A regiment of cavalry consists of six squadrons, each squadron of fourpelotons, eachpeloton of two companies, each company of two escouardes, and each escouarde of two men.
Then the chief of eachpeloton came forward, snapped fingers with us as we sat on our chairs under the tree, our guards ranged on the right, a mob of gazers—women scratching and boys pulling—on the left, and an open space in front.
2000,Margers Vestermanis, “Local Headquarters Liepaja: Two Months of German Occupation in the Summer of 1941”, inHannes Heer,Klaus Naumann, editors,War of Extermination: The German Military in World War II, 1941–1944 (Studies on War and Genocide; 3), New York, N.Y.:Berghahn Books, published2009,→ISBN,page232:
In Bauske, on 2 July, the local commandant had twenty hostages publicly shot at the Memel bridge by apeloton supplied by the local headquarters, allegedly in "reprisal" for the German soldiers who had fallen in the battles for the town.
“peloton”, inKielitoimiston sanakirja [Dictionary of Contemporary Finnish][3] (in Finnish) (online dictionary, continuously updated), Kotimaisten kielten keskuksen verkkojulkaisuja 35, Helsinki:Kotimaisten kielten tutkimuskeskus (Institute for the Languages of Finland),2004–, retrieved2023-07-03
, Oxford:Oxford University Press, March 2022;“peloton,n.”, inLexico,Dictionary.com;Oxford University Press,2019–2022.
peloton on Wikipedia.Wikipedia