CADRE: 1: framework 2: a central unit especially of trained personnel able to assume control and train others 3: a group of people with a unifying relationship
"Cadre" traces to the Latin quadrum, meaning "square." And since squares can make good frameworks, it's easy to understand why first French-speakers and later English-speakers used "cadre" as a word meaning "framework." If you think of a core group of officers in a regiment as the framework that holds things together for the unit, you can see how the "central unit" sense of "cadre" developed. Military leaders and their troops are well trained and work together as a unified team, which may explain why "cadre" is now sometimes used more generally to refer to any group of people who have some kind of unifying characteristic, even if they aren't leaders.
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