Admiral

How to spell admiral

7 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce admiral

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does admiral mean?

1. nounA senior officer who commands a fleet or a major part of a navy.

Admiral in a sentence

• The admiral ordered the fleet to return to port before the storm.

• After thirty years at sea she was finally promoted to admiral.

Where does admiral come from?

Language of origin: Arabic

This word has a surprising origin in Arabic, where amir meant 'commander' or 'prince' and al meant 'the'; phrases such as amir al-bahr, 'commander of the sea', and amir al-ma, 'commander of the water', described naval leaders. European languages picked up the run-together fragment amir-al during the medieval Mediterranean trade and crusading era, and it passed through Medieval Latin and Old French into English in the 1200s and 1300s. The intrusive 'd' that gives us admiral, rather than amiral, was added because writers wrongly linked the word to the Latin admirari, 'to wonder at' or 'to admire', so the spelling drifted toward that familiar Latin shape. Over time the meaning narrowed from a general commander to specifically a senior officer in a navy. The lingering trap for spellers is exactly that hidden history: the middle is spelled with an 'i' (admir-) even though it sounds like a weak schwa, and there is only one 'l' at the end.

How the word is built

• admir- (from Arabic amir al: commander of the)
• -al (ending reshaped by Latin admirabilis)