Civilian

ci•vil•ian
–noun

1. a person who is not on active duty with a military, naval, police, or fire fighting organization.
   
2. Informal. anyone regarded by members of a profession, interest group, society, etc., as not belonging; nonprofessional; outsider: We need a producer to run the movie studio, not some civilian from the business world.
   
3. a person versed in or studying Roman or civil law.

–adjective

4. of, pertaining to, formed by, or administered by civilians.

Dictionary.com Unabridged (v 1.1)

What’s another word for “civilian”, the adjective, not the noun? “Private” is the best I could find.

I gave my classes another round of quizzes last week, their fifth; and I plan to give at least a couple more before the semester ends. A student raised her hand during one of the quizzes. When I went to her desk she pointed to her quiz paper and asked “sir, what is the meaning of this word?” pointing to the word “civilian”. It was a true-or-false question:

The unemployment rate measures the percentage of the civilian population that is out of work.

The answer is false.

What’s another word for “civilian”? I was quite a bit taken aback that somebody even asked what such a common word means – “non-military”? “Outsider”? I opened the question to the class. There were a few chuckles, but then another student raised his hand and said, “isn’t ‘civilian’ the same as ‘population’?”

Somebody, kill me!

I just told them to ignore the word.