Colonel: The Word That Lost Its L and Kept Its Spelling
A colonel is a senior military officer. The spelling and the pronunciation disagree completely, because the word came into English by two routes at once.
A colonel commands a regiment, ranking above a lieutenant colonel and below a brigadier or general. Its pronunciation is the strangest in English military vocabulary: it is said KER-nel, as though spelled kernel, and the reason is a collision between two versions of the same word.
- A senior army or air force officer. *Colonel Reyes took command.*
- An honorary title. *Colonel of the regiment.*
Word forms
| Form | Word | Example |
|---|---|---|
| Noun | colonel | A retired colonel. |
| Abbreviation | Col. | Col. A. Bekir. |
| Rank below | lieutenant colonel | Promoted from lieutenant colonel. |
| Noun | colonelcy | He was offered a colonelcy. |
| Related | column | A marching column. |
How it is used in a sentence
- The colonel addressed the assembled officers.Pronounced KER-nel in every variety of English.
- She was promoted to colonel last year.No article after promoted to.
- Colonel is written Col. in formal address.Standard military abbreviation.
Why the spelling and sound disagree
- The Italian original was *colonnello*, the officer commanding a *colonna*, a column of soldiers
- French borrowed it and dissimilated the first l into an r, giving *coronel*
- English took the French pronunciation and the Italian-influenced spelling at roughly the same time
- By the eighteenth century the written form settled on colonel and the spoken form on kernel
- Neither side gave way, and English has lived with the mismatch ever since
The word therefore preserves a five-hundred-year-old argument between two languages. It is the clearest example in English of a spelling and a pronunciation descending from different ancestors of the same word.
How is colonel pronounced?
KER-nel, two syllables, identical to kernel. There is no variety of English in which the l is sounded.
Which rank is higher, colonel or lieutenant colonel?
Colonel. Adding lieutenant to a rank name lowers it by one step, as it also does for lieutenant general.