Commander

How to spell commander

9 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce commander

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does commander mean?

1. nounA person in authority who directs or controls a group, especially in the military or police.

Commander in a sentence

• The commander ordered the troops to hold their position until dawn.

• As fire commander, she coordinated every crew at the scene.

Where does commander come from?

Language of origin: Latin

The word traces back to the Latin verb mandare, meaning 'to commit, to entrust, or to give an order', which itself joined manus 'hand' and dare 'to give', so the literal idea was placing something into someone's hand. From mandare grew a later Latin form commandare, where the prefix com- added force, and this passed into Old French as comander, meaning 'to order or to be in charge of'. English took the verb in the medieval period, and the agent noun commander, 'one who commands', was in use by the 1400s, especially for military and naval leaders. The same mandare root still lives in everyday relatives such as 'mandate', 'demand', and 'recommend'. The spelling trap is the unstressed vowels and the single 'm' in the middle: it is commander, not commaunder or commmander, and the ending is the agent -er rather than -or.

How the word is built

• com- (intensive, from Latin com-: together)
• mand (from mandare: to order, to entrust)
• -er (agent suffix: one who does)