soldier
Americannoun
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soldiers
plural
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a person who serves in an army; a person engaged in military service.
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an enlisted person, as distinguished from a commissioned officer.
the soldiers' mess and the officers' mess.
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a person of military skill or experience.
George Washington was a great soldier.
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a person who contends or serves in any cause.
a soldier of the Lord.
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Also called button man. Slang. a low-ranking member of a crime organization or syndicate.
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Entomology.
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a member of a caste of sexually underdeveloped female ants or termites specialized, as with powerful jaws, to defend the colony from invaders.
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a similar member of a caste of worker bees, specialized to protect the hive.
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a brick laid vertically with the narrower long face out.
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Informal. a person who avoids work or pretends to work; loafer; malingerer.
verb (used without object)
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soldiers,
present (3rd person singular)
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soldiered,
past participle, past
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soldiering
present participle
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to act or serve as a soldier.
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Informal. to loaf while pretending to work; malinger.
He was soldiering on the job.
verb phrase
noun
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a person who serves or has served in an army
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Also called: common soldier. a noncommissioned member of an army as opposed to a commissioned officer
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a person who works diligently for a cause
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a low-ranking member of the Mafia or other organized crime ring
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zoology
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an individual in a colony of social insects, esp ants, that has powerful jaws adapted for defending the colony, crushing large food particles, etc
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( as modifier )
soldier ant
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informal a strip of bread or toast that is dipped into a soft-boiled egg
verb
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to serve as a soldier
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obsolete to malinger or shirk
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Nouns
Participles
Conjugated Forms
Present
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soldiersimple
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soldierssimple
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have soldieredperfect
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has soldieredperfect
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am soldieringprogressive
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are soldieringprogressive
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is soldieringprogressive
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have been soldieringperfect progressive
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has been soldieringperfect progressive
Past
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soldieredsimple
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had soldieredperfect
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was soldieringprogressive
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were soldieringprogressive
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had been soldieringperfect progressive
Future
Etymology
Origin of soldier
First recorded in 1250–1300; Middle English souldiour, from Old French soudier, so(i)dier, equivalent to soulde “pay” (from Latin solidus; see sol 2) + -ier -ier 2
Explanation
In a war, soldiers are the people who do the fighting, on the ground, in planes, or from boats. Soldier is also a verb that means to serve in the military, or to continue on through difficult times. What is an army without soldiers? It’s a bunch of guns on the ground. A soldier is the man or woman who fights for their government and carries the weapons, risking their life in the process. The word comes from the Latin solidus, which is the name of the gold coin used to pay soldiers who fought in the Roman army. To “soldier on” means to not give up even when life is tough, like soldiering on through difficult vocabulary.
Vocabulary lists containing soldier
Unit 1: Telling Details
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Occupations
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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:
"We feel it," says Olga, whose son-in-law is a soldier in the "special operation".
From BBC ● Sep. 17, 2026
In an austere look at the price of lies, Ms. Hüller plays a 17th-century European woman who first poses as a male soldier and then claims the inheritance of a dead man.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 10, 2026
Pentagon chief Pete Hegseth separately appeared to mock the physical appearance of a Canadian soldier on social media.
From Barron's ● Sep. 8, 2026
We drove past an undeveloped beach—no facilities, just a handful of people taking a dip—and up to a viewpoint where there was a military outpost containing one soldier and his dog.
From Slate ● Sep. 8, 2026
I could only hear portions as he made a show of pulling the soldier aside and secretly presenting the kingfisher feathers he had acquired the previous day.
From "The Many Assassinations of Samir, the Seller of Dreams" by Daniel Nayeri
DAUDZEVA, Latvia—Wearing strips of red tape on their helmets, Danish soldiers stealthily moved through the pine forest and then, unleashing a firestorm, overran a position held by Spanish troops.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 22, 2026
During the 1710 siege of Tallinn, for example, the disease killed Swedish and Russian soldiers as well as civilians.
From Science Daily ● Sep. 20, 2026
About a third of this will go towards wages for soldiers, while the remainder will largely go towards weapons and equipment, the release said.
From Barron's ● Sep. 17, 2026
The Bloody Sunday Inquiry, which found the killing of 13 civil rights protesters in Northern Ireland by British soldiers was "unjustified", took 12 years to complete and cost more than £190m.
From BBC ● Sep. 17, 2026
But to my surprise I saw that he was looking at the soldiers now forming into ranks to march away.
From "The Hiding Place" by Corrie ten Boom
“Even during the depths of Covid, those Hot Pockets soldiered on.”
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jun. 5, 2026
Meanwhile, the artificial-intelligence boom soldiered on, with strong performance spreading well beyond members of the “Magnificent Seven.”
From MarketWatch ● Dec. 31, 2025
In the hospital, I soldiered through the physical misery of a collapsed lung.
From Slate ● Dec. 26, 2025
Putting it down to exhaustion, she soldiered on, especially after a health check gave her the all-clear.
From BBC ● Oct. 9, 2024
"It was rough on morale, but we soldiered on. Besides, he won't die."
From "The Martian" by Andy Weir
In the two months since the Strait of Hormuz was closed, many of the world’s major economies have been soldiering on.
From The Wall Street Journal ● May 4, 2026
That is not the case in the United States anymore, but our financial markets had been soldiering on anyway.
From Slate ● Apr. 8, 2025
An accomplished journalist for a New Yorker-style publication with a specialty in culture and race, he’s a lapsed Muslim, unattached and mourning his late father but soldiering on.
From Los Angeles Times ● Mar. 12, 2025
"He might have his moments but right now he is still soldiering on," Jonas said.
From BBC ● Mar. 6, 2025
His wooden leg was at once a certificate of proof of his soldiering and a guarantee that he wouldn’t ever have to do it again.
From "East of Eden" by John Steinbeck
Definitions 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.
