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I found this in a TED-Ed video

In the wake of such tragedy, it’s tempting to paint conflicts in simplistic terms—casting one group as oppressor and the other as oppressed.

I’m wondering why it’s OK to use the words oppressor and oppressed in these “bare” forms when they are not titles, and especially, the latter is not even a noun.

I would expect it to be:

In the wake of such tragedy, it’s tempting to paint conflicts in simplistic terms—casting one group as oppressors and the other as the oppressed.

Does these two contrasting words being used in a pair have anything to do with it?

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No, it's not about them being used as a pair.

A group is made up of a set of individuals but a group, considered as a whole, is singular.

So you could say "casting the members of one group as oppressors" so the plural members get a plural adjective; but you say "casting one group as oppressor" so the single group gets a singular adjective.

As for "the oppressed", you could very well say that, it would be perfectly correct. But "the" has already been used just 3 words previously, and the meaning is quite clear without it, so it simply "scans better" to leave it out.

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  • But as the OP intimates it does change the word oppressed from a noun (the oppressed) to an adjective (as oppressed). Nothing wrong with that - but it is an interesting observation.
    – WS2
    Jul 22, 2022 at 19:28

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