Captain

How to spell captain

7 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce captain

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does captain mean?

1. nounA person who leads or commands a group, ship, aircraft, military unit, or sports team.
2. verbTo lead or be in command of a team, ship, or group.

Captain in a sentence

• noun

  The captain steered the ferry safely into the harbour.

• verb

  He was asked to captain the rugby side in the final.

• noun

  She was named captain of the netball team for the season.

• verb

  Only a senior officer may captain a vessel of that size.

Where does captain come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word traces back to the Latin caput, meaning 'head', the same root that gives us 'capital' and 'decapitate'. In late Latin, the adjective capitaneus developed to describe someone who was 'chief' or 'at the head', literally a leader of others. That word passed into Old French as capitaine, and English borrowed it during the 1300s to mean a commander or leader of a body of troops. Over the centuries it spread to the person in charge of a ship, then to the senior officer of a company of soldiers, and eventually to the leader of a sports team. The hidden trap in the spelling is the silent, unstressed second syllable, which sounds like a vague '-tin' but is actually '-tain', a reminder of that French ending.

How the word is built

• capt- (from Latin caput: head)
• -ain (noun suffix denoting a person)