aide-de-camp
noun
Simple meaning
A military officer who serves as an adjutant to a higher ranking officer, prince or other high political dignitary.
Pronunciation
Say it like this:
ayddihkampSay the bold part a little louder.
IPA pronunciation (US)
ˌeɪd dɪ ˈkæmp
This word is pronounced essentially the same in American and British English, so one transcription covers both.
IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) is a standard way of writing speech sounds.
Definition
Everyday modern meanings first, grouped by part of speech.
noun
A military officer who serves as an adjutant to a higher ranking officer, prince or other high political dignitary.
Word at a Glance
- Difficulty
- C2 · Proficient (estimated)
- Typical Use
- Rare
Word Aura™
How this word commonly comes across.
This meaning: A military officer who serves as an adjutant to a higher ranking officer, prince or other high political dignitary.
Used this way, aide-de-camp is a specialist word that usually carries little praise or criticism of its own. This is a military use: it belongs to service and operational language.
- Emotional tone
- Neutral
- Formality
- Specialist/technical
- Intensity
- Not strongly marked
- How common
- Specialized
- Connotation
- Clinical and technical
- Usage feel
- Technical and specialized
Where it naturally appears
- Military
- Historical writing
- News/reporting
- Government/politics
Usage note
In general conversation this sense usually needs explaining — outside its field, people reach for a plainer word.
Nearby words
- adjutant , a specialist term, precise but narrower
- aide , a specialist term, precise but narrower
Word Aura describes common impressions, not a measurement. Tone changes with sentence, speaker, relationship and situation.
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Dictionary data from Wiktionary via the Free Dictionary API (CC BY-SA 3.0). Simple meanings, combinations and word intelligence are built from verified reference data, no AI is used to load this page.