colonel

American  

[kur-nl] / ˈkɜr 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.

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colonel British  

/ ˈkɜːnəl /

noun

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

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Pronunciation

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

Etymology

Origin of colonel

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

Example Sentences

The 37-year-old was told by a man who identified himself as a former air force colonel that the job was in Dubai.

From Barron's

The Prince of Wales, who is the regiment's colonel, was also on hand to dish out dessert to the junior ranks at Combermere Barracks in Windsor on Thursday.

From BBC

“There’s priority and money,” said Mark Cancian, a senior adviser at the Center for Strategic and International Studies and a retired Marine colonel.

From The Wall Street Journal

He was executed the following year, and the war ground on for another decade until Agustín de Iturbide, a royalist colonel, switched allegiances and led the rebel factions to independence.

From The Wall Street Journal

When Francis Gary Powers walked back from the bathroom on the evening of February 7, 1962, he was surprised to see a KGB colonel at the door of his prison cell.

From Literature