officer
noun · verb
Simple meaning
Any person in the armed services who holds a position of authority or command.
Pronunciation
Say it like this:
awfuhserSay the bold part a little louder.
IPA pronunciation (US)
ˈɔfəsɚ
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
Any person in the armed services who holds a position of authority or command
“An officer is responsible for the lives of his men.”
Someone who is appointed or elected to an office and who holds a position of trust
One who holds a public office.
One who has a position of authority in a hierarchical organization, especially in military, police or government organizations.
A respectful term of address for an officer, especially a police officer.
An agent or servant imparted with the ability, to some degree, to act on initiative.
verb
transitive
To supply with officers.
Direct or command as an officer
transitive
To command as or like an officer.
Word at a Glance
- Difficulty
- A2 · Elementary
- Frequency
- Very Common
- Typical Use
- Everyday English
Word Aura™
How this word commonly comes across.
Aura for this meaning
This meaning: Any person in the armed services who holds a position of authority or command
Used this way, officer is a common word that usually carries little praise or criticism of its own. It usually sounds natural in a wide range of settings.
“An officer is responsible for the lives of his men.”
- Emotional tone
- Neutral
- Formality
- Neutral
- Intensity
- Not strongly marked
- How common
- Common
- Connotation
- Matter-of-fact
- Usage feel
- Neutral and straightforward
Nearby words
- officeholder , rarer, so it draws attention
Word Aura describes common impressions, not a measurement. Tone changes with sentence, speaker, relationship and situation.
More ways to use officer
- “An officer is responsible for the lives of his men.”noun
- “He is the officer in charge of the ship's engines.”noun
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Common Patterns and Combinations
How this word naturally appears with others.
Word Family
Related forms, grouped by how they connect.
Inflected forms
Grammatical variations of the same word.
Place of business where professional or clerical duties are performed.
Word family
Words built from the same root.
A worker who holds or is invested with an office.
In an official role.
Compound terms
Established multiword terms.
An officer in the airforce.
An officer in the armed forces.
An operative who also serves as an official staffer of an intelligence service.
The corporate executive responsible for the operations of the firm.
The corporate executive having financial authority to make appropriations and authorize expenditures for a firm.
The corporate executive responsible for the operations of the firm.
Related words
Connected by subject or meaning, not by word formation.
A mess for the exclusive use of officers.
More about this wordSynonyms, forms, origin
Synonyms
Sense: any person in the armed services who holds a position of authority
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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.