Commodore

How to spell commodore

9 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce commodore

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does commodore mean?

1. nounA senior naval officer ranking above a captain and below a rear admiral, or the officer in charge of a yacht club or fleet.

Commodore in a sentence

• The commodore inspected every ship in the squadron before they sailed.

• After thirty years at sea he was finally promoted to commodore.

Where does commodore come from?

Language of origin: Dutch

Commodore is a naval rank that entered English in the late 1600s, and its spelling has wandered a long way from its roots. The most accepted account traces it to the Dutch word kommandeur, meaning 'commander', which the English navy picked up during the era of close rivalry and contact with Dutch fleets. The Dutch form itself goes back through French commandeur to the Late Latin commandare, 'to command or entrust', built on the classical Latin mandare, which literally meant 'to give into someone's hand' and so 'to order'. English ears reshaped commandeur into the smoother 'commodore', and the unexpected 'o' in the second syllable is exactly the spelling trap, since people instinctively want to write 'commandore' after the familiar word 'command'. The same mandare root sits inside 'mandate', 'command', and 'commend', all of which share that idea of handing over an instruction.

How the word is built

• com- (intensive, from Latin com-)
• mand (to order or entrust, from Latin mandare)
• -ore (agent ending, reshaped in English)