the.com/colonel
A rank with a silent army of letters nobody invited.
means A senior military officer ranking above a lieutenant colonel and below a brigadier general, commanding a regiment or similar large unit.
from A wonderful collision of two spellings. Italian gave us 'colonnello,' the officer who led the little column ('colonna') of soldiers at the head of a regiment. French borrowed it, then mangled it into 'coronel,' swapping one of the L sounds for an R — a slip linguists call dissimilation, where two similar sounds in a word drift apart. English absorbed both versions in the 16th century, and for a while we couldn't decide. Eventually we kept the Italian-style spelling, 'colonel,' but the French-style pronunciation, 'kernel' — leaving the word permanently at war with itself.
- silent l
- Spelled colonel, pronounced kernel, agrees with neither
- italian roots
- From colonnello, leader of a column of troops
- french detour
- French swapped it to coronel, mangling the spelling forever
- kfc title
- Sanders was an honorary Kentucky colonel, not military
- two words
- English kept Italian spelling but French pronunciation entirely
colonel sanders — kfc founder who perfected his fried chicken recipe at age 62 in 1952
colonel tom parker — elvis presley's manager who controlled his career from 1955 until elvis's death in 1977
theodore roosevelt colonel — led the rough riders cavalry regiment in the spanish-american war in 1898 cuba