Exercise - operation

Those with military experience can be irritated by a modern tendency to misuse these words. To the armed forces, an exercise is a practice, a piece of training. It is often designed to resemble 'the real thing' (war); but a similar action carried out against a real enemy, with soldiers shooting back, is called an operation. The exercise is what is sometimes called in civilian life a 'dummy run', or a 'trial run'.

So it is a misuse to name the new way of carrying out business, or a new campaign to sell a new product, or the adoption of a new system in the office etc, an exercise. It is a real action. People may get hurt. Therefore it should be called an operation.

If it were an exercise, it would be merely a practice, with blank ammunition. Operation Overlord (the code-name for D-Day in 1944) was preceded by many exercises, or practices.