The word colonel has one of the weirdest and most delightful etymological journeys in English.
Here's a little timeline of its linguistic chaos:
Step 1: Latin – columnella
Original word: columnella (a diminutive of columna, meaning "column") - used in military contexts to describe a column of soldiers (formation, structure, order)
Step 2: Italian – colonnello
Italian military borrowed columnella and turned it into colonnello, meaning “the commander of a column.”
Step 3: French – coronel
The French borrowed it but pronounced it as “coronel.”
Its spelling changed too: colonnello → coronel
Step 4: English – colonel
English borrowed both the spelling from Italian (colonnello → colonel) and the pronunciation from French (coronel). The result is that we spell it colonel but say it “kernel.”
Fun fact:
For a while in the 1500s and 1600s, both spellings existed in English: coronel and colonel.
Eventually, the Italian spelling won, but the French pronunciation stuck.
So today, we salute our colonels with Italian spelling, French pronunciation, and Latin roots.
