subaltern

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A private salutes like a machine; a subaltern is awkward, but a senior officer manages somehow to insinuate into this simple movement deference and admiration, backed, as it were, with determination and self-reliance It is as if he were to say: "I have the greatest esteem for you as a great man.

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Definitions (13)

Toggle American Heritage definitions American Heritage Dictionary (6)

  1. adjective Lower in position or rank; secondary.
  2. adjective Chiefly British Holding a military rank just below that of captain.
  3. adjective Logic In the relation of a particular proposition to a universal with the same subject, predicate, and quality.

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Examples (50)

  • A letter from Marion himself, to Col. P. Horry, thus details the event On the 20th inst. I attacked a guard of the 63d and Prince of Wales' Regiment, with a number of Tories, at the Great Savannah, near Nelson's Ferry; killed and took twenty-two regulars, and two Tories prisoners, and retook one hundred and fifty Continentals of the Maryland line, one wagon and a drum; one captain and a subaltern were also captured. —  The Life of Francis Marion
  • About John French the subaltern, as about John French the midshipman, history is silent. —  Sir John French
  • Now, there has been an enormous amount of ink spilled on the question of why the Latin American subaltern studies group split up -- no doubt more ink thank the group itself spilled while it existed. —  Posthegemony
  • He recommended that a subaltern, a Second Lieutenant whom nobody would miss much if he fell, should be sent up the tree. —  Our Casualty, and Other Stories 1918
  • Now the subaltern was one of the many of us civilians who have a burning ambition not only to achieve perfection always, but also to maintain on all occasions a superlatively military bearing. —  Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, February 16, 1916
 

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Roget's II Roget's II: The New Thesaurus

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Roget's II: The New Thesaurus, Third Edition by the Editors of the American Heritage® Dictionary. Copyright © 2003, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

Etymologies (2)

Toggle American Heritage etymologies American Heritage Dictionary (1)

  1. French subalterne, from Old French, from Late Latin subalternus : Latin sub-, sub- + Latin alternus, alternate (from alter, other; see al-1 in Indo-European roots).

Toggle Century etymologies Century Dictionary (1)

  1. from French subalterne = Spanish Portuguese Italian subalterno, from Middle Latin subalternus, subaltern, from Latin sub, under, + alternus, one after the other, alternate: see altern.
 

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/ˈsəbæltərn/
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