lieutenant colonel
noun
Simple meaning
An army officer in many countries.
Pronunciation
Say it like this:
lootehnuhntkurnuhlSay the bold part a little louder.
IPA pronunciation (US)
luˈtɛnəntˈkɝnəl
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
An army officer in many countries, ranking below a colonel and above a major. Often the commander of a battalion or the executive officer of a regiment.
A commissioned officer in the United States Army or Air Force or Marines holding a rank above major and below colonel
An officer in the United States Air Force, Air Force Reserve, or Air National Guard, ranking below colonel and above major. Often the commander of a squadron or the executive officer of a wing.
An officer in the United States Marine Corps or Royal Marines, of equivalent rank to their counterparts in the army.
Word Aura™
How this word commonly comes across.
This meaning: An army officer in many countries, ranking below a colonel and above a major. Often the commander of a battalion or the executive officer of a regiment.
Used this way, lieutenant colonel 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
- Technical/specialist writing
Usage note
In general conversation this sense usually needs explaining — outside its field, people reach for a plainer word.
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. Simple meanings, combinations and word intelligence are built from verified reference data, no AI is used to load this page.