cadet
pronunciation
How to pronounce cadet in British English:
UK [kəˈdet]
How to pronounce cadet in American English:
US [kəˈdɛt]
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- Noun:
- a military trainee (as at a military academy)
Word Origin
- cadet
- cadet: [17] Etymologically, a cadet is a ‘little head’. Its original meaning in English was ‘younger son or brother’, and it came from French cadet, an alteration of a Gascon dialect term capdet ‘chief’. This in turn derived from Vulgar Latin *capitellus ‘little head’, a diminutive form of Latin caput ‘head’ (from which English also gets captain and chief).The reason for its apparently rather strange change in meaning from ‘chief’ to ‘younger son’ seems to be that the younger sons of Gascon families were in former times sent to the French court to fulfil the role of officers. When English borrowed French cadet, it did so not only in a form that retained the original spelling, but also as caddie or cadee, which originally meant ‘young officer’.The Scottish version, caddie, gradually developed in meaning over the centuries through ‘person who runs errands’ to, in the 19th century, ‘golfer’s assistant’. Cad, originally ‘unskilled assistant’ [18], is an abbreviation of caddie or cadee.=> captain, chief
- cadet (n.)
- c. 1610, "younger son or brother," from French cadet "military student officer," noun use of adjective, "younger" (15c.), from Gascon capdet "captain, chief, youth of a noble family," from Late Latin capitellum, literally "little chief," hence, "inferior head of a family," diminutive of Latin caput "head" (see capitulum). "The eldest son being regarded as the first head of the family, the second son the cadet, or little head" [Kitchin]. Apparently younger sons from Gascon noble families were sent to French court to serve as officers, which gave the word its military meaning. In English, the meaning "gentleman entering the military as a profession" is from 1650s, and that of "student at a military college" is from 1775.
Example
- 1. He wants one cadet from each academy to go with us .
- 2. An army cadet watches the college football game against the navy midshipmen december 12 at lincoln financial field in philadelphia .
- 3. Her boyfriend is a cadet of west point .
- 4. This cadet 's father 's known to take chances .
- 5. A young service academy cadet who is likely to be serving in a war zone within the year believes there are things worth dying for but doesn 't seem to have thought much about what is worth killing for .