commander
Americannoun
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commanders
plural
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a person who commands.
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a person who exercises authority; chief officer; leader.
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the commissioned officer in command of a military unit.
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U.S. Navy. an officer ranking below a captain and above a lieutenant commander.
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a police officer in charge of a precinct or other unit.
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the chief officer of a commandery in the medieval orders of Knights Hospitalers, Knights Templars, and others.
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a member of one of the higher classes or ranks in certain modern fraternal orders, as in the Knights Templars.
noun
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an officer in command of a military formation or operation
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a naval commissioned rank junior to captain but senior to lieutenant commander
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the second in command of larger British warships
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someone who holds authority
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a high-ranking member of some knightly or fraternal orders
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an officer responsible for a district of the Metropolitan Police in London
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history the administrator of a house, priory, or landed estate of a medieval religious order
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Nouns
Etymology
Origin of commander
1250–1300; Middle English < Old French comandere, equivalent to comand ( er ) to command + -ere < Latin -ātōr- -ator
Explanation
A commander is the person in charge, particularly in the military. If you're in the Navy, your commander gives directions that you're expected to follow. A commander does exactly what it sounds like: she issues instructions or commands and assumes they'll be obeyed. Although there are other kinds of commanders, you're most likely to find the word describing a military official. The President of the United States is considered the "Commander-in-Chief" of the US Armed Forces. The word comes from the Old French comander, "to order."
Vocabulary lists containing commander
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This Week in Words: Current Events Vocab for December 18–December 24, 2021
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Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
He washed out—“See, you don’t know how to do this,” Rosenfeld told him—but, again, out of respect for the commander, he sent Woodward to the editor of a weekly newspaper in Montgomery County, Maryland.
From Slate ● Nov. 12, 2026
More than 500 of its soldiers remain in Russian captivity, according to Azov commander Denys Prokopenko.
From Barron's ● Nov. 9, 2026
Capt. Ryan A. Vienna, commander of the Crescenta Valley Station, credited the fire department with extinguishing “a potentially disastrous fire that could have affected all LA County residents.”
From Los Angeles Times ● Nov. 8, 2026
His commander, Naum, helped him exchange messages with his wife, Tetyana, by holding his phone to the radio to record a few phrases.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Nov. 6, 2026
She’d changed since my Lincoln simulation and looked every inch the commander in chief in her fitted black uniform.
From "Glitch" by Laura Martin
Drones might send pictures to commanders far away.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Nov. 12, 2026
The measures follow earlier US sanctions against Rwanda's army and four senior military commanders in March 2026.
From BBC ● Oct. 29, 2026
On Saturday, North Korean state media said leader Kim Jong Un had urged his military to become the strongest in the world at a two-day meeting of company commanders in Pyongyang last week.
From Barron's ● Oct. 25, 2026
But across the front line in Ukraine, I observed soldiers and commanders approaching AI with healthy skepticism.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 20, 2026
He managed to convince German commanders he was on their side, then fed them damaging misinformation, diverting their attention from upcoming Soviet attacks.
From "Fallout: Spies, Superbombs, and the Ultimate Cold War Showdown" by Steve Sheinkin
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Get a wordDefinitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
