Colonel

How to spell colonel

7 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce colonel

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does colonel mean?

1. nounA senior army officer ranking above a lieutenant colonel and below a brigadier or general.

Colonel in a sentence

• The colonel ordered the regiment to hold its position overnight.

• After thirty years of service she retired with the rank of colonel.

Where does colonel come from?

Language of origin: Italian

The word comes from the Italian colonnello, meaning the commander of a small column of soldiers, which was built on colonna 'column', itself from the Latin columna 'pillar' or 'column'. When the term passed into French in the 1500s, French speakers altered it to coronel, swapping one of the two 'l' sounds for an 'r' through a common process of dissonance. English borrowed both versions at roughly the same time, so for a while writers used 'coronel' as well as 'colonel'. Eventually the Italian-style spelling with the 'l' won out on the page, while the French-influenced pronunciation with the 'r' won out in the mouth, which is exactly why we now write 'colonel' but say it as 'kernel'. That split between an 'l' you can see and an 'r' you can hear is the whole reason the word is such a notorious spelling trap.

How the word is built

• colon- (from Italian colonna: a column of soldiers)
• -el (diminutive/agent ending)

Words that sound like colonel

They sound the same but mean different things, so the meaning decides which spelling to write.

• kernel: The softer, usually edible part inside the shell, husk, or stone of a nut or seed; more broadly, the central or most important part of something.