Squad
nounA small group of people organised to work or play together, especially in the military, police, or sport.
How to spell squad
5 letters · 1 syllable
How to pronounce squad
What does squad mean?
- nounA small group of people organised to work or play together, especially in the military, police, or sport.
Squad in a sentence
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The bomb disposal squad arrived within minutes of the call.
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The coach named a thirty-player squad for the tournament.
Where does squad come from?
Language of origin: Spanish
The word squad arrived in English in the 1600s from the French escouade, which itself came from the Spanish escuadra and the Italian squadra, all meaning a square or a square block of soldiers drawn up for battle. Those Romance forms trace back to a Vulgar Latin verb meaning to square off or set in order, ultimately from the Latin quadrare, to make square, and quattuor, the number four. The original military picture was literally a small body of troops arranged in a square, and English narrowed it over time to mean any small group acting together. The same square-shaped root still surfaces in words such as square, squadron, and quadrant, which all share that idea of four-sided order. Because the word is short and the qu represents a clear /kw/ sound, it is rarely misspelled.
How the word is built
- squad (from Spanish/Italian squadra: a square formation of soldiers)
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