colonel

[kur-nl]

noun

1. an officer in the U.S. Army, Air Force, or Marine Corps ranking between lieutenant colonel and brigadier general: corresponding to a captain in the U.S. Navy.

2. a commissioned officer of similar rank in the armed forces of some other nations.

3. an honorary title bestowed by some Southern states, as to those who have brought honor to the state, prominent businesspersons, visiting celebrities, or the like.

   When the vice president visited the state he was made a Kentucky colonel.

4. Older Use.,  (in the South) a title of respect prefixed to the name of distinguished elderly men.

colonel

/ ˈkɜːnəl /

noun

1. an officer of land or air forces junior to a brigadier but senior to a lieutenant colonel

Pronunciation Note

Colonel , with its medial l pronounced as , illustrates one source for the apparent vagaries of English spelling: divergence between a word's orthographic development and its established pronunciation. In this case, English borrowed from French two variant forms of the same word, one pronounced with medial and final , and a second reflecting dissimilation of the first to . After a period of competition, the dissimilated form triumphed in pronunciation, while the spelling colonel became the orthographic standard.

Other Word Forms

• colonelcy noun

Word History and Origins

Origin of colonel¹

1540–50; < Middle French < Italian colon(n)ello, equivalent to colonn(a) column + -ello < Latin -ellus diminutive suffix; so named because such an officer originally headed the first column or company of a regiment

Word History and Origins

Origin of colonel¹

C16: via Old French, from Old Italian colonnello column of soldiers, from colonna _column

Example Sentences

Intelligence operatives working with Cuban counterintelligence agents reward those who betray conspirators with jobs, money, cars and even homes, said Edward Rodríguez, a former army colonel who fled Venezuela and lives in exile.

Read more on The Wall Street Journal

He also lost a series of UK military titles including colonel of the Grenadier Guards, honorary air commodore of RAF Lossiemouth and colonel-in-chief of the Royal Irish Regiment.

Read more on BBC

He continued: “Now, would it be nice if that kind of activity spurred a colonel to lead a coup? Yeah, it would be nice. But the administration is never going to say that.”

Read more on Los Angeles Times

Ordinary soldiers are poorly fed, and there is little in the way of logistics to provide the provisions for deployed units, said Edward Rodriguez, a former colonel now exiled in the U.S.

Read more on The Wall Street Journal

The father-of-six is accused of being a former colonel in Libya's intelligence service and has been in US custody since 2022.

Read more on BBC