LIEUTENANT

Pronunciation (US):

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IPA (US):

 Dictionary entry overview: What does lieutenant mean? 

• LIEUTENANT (noun)
  The noun LIEUTENANT has 4 senses:

1. a commissioned military officer

2. an officer in a police force

3. an assistant with power to act when his superior is absent

4. an officer holding a commissioned rank in the United States Navy or the United States Coast Guard; below lieutenant commander and above lieutenant junior grade

  Familiarity information: LIEUTENANT used as a noun is uncommon.

 Dictionary entry details 

• LIEUTENANT (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

A commissioned military officer

Classified under:

Nouns denoting people

Hypernyms ("lieutenant" is a kind of...):

commissioned military officer (a commissioned officer in the Army or Air Force or Marine Corps)

Domain category:

armed forces; armed services; military; military machine; war machine (the military forces of a nation)

Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "lieutenant"):

1st lieutenant; first lieutenant (a commissioned officer in the Army or Air Force or Marines ranking above a 2nd lieutenant and below a captain)

2nd lieutenant; second lieutenant (a commissioned officer in the Army or Air Force or Marine Corps holding the lowest rank)

sublieutenant (an officer ranking next below a lieutenant)

Derivation:

lieutenancy (the position of a lieutenant)

Sense 2

Meaning:

An officer in a police force

Classified under:

Nouns denoting people

Synonyms:

lieutenant; police lieutenant

Hypernyms ("lieutenant" is a kind of...):

law officer; lawman; peace officer (an officer of the law)

Derivation:

lieutenancy (the position of a lieutenant)

Sense 3

Meaning:

An assistant with power to act when his superior is absent

Classified under:

Nouns denoting people

Synonyms:

deputy; lieutenant

Hypernyms ("lieutenant" is a kind of...):

assistant; help; helper; supporter (a person who contributes to the fulfillment of a need or furtherance of an effort or purpose)

Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "lieutenant"):

second-in-command (someone who relieves a commander)

vicar-general ((Roman Catholic Church) an administrative deputy who assists a bishop)

vice-regent (a regent's deputy)

Derivation:

lieutenancy (the position of a lieutenant)

Sense 4

Meaning:

An officer holding a commissioned rank in the United States Navy or the United States Coast Guard; below lieutenant commander and above lieutenant junior grade

Classified under:

Nouns denoting people

Hypernyms ("lieutenant" is a kind of...):

commissioned naval officer (a commissioned officer in the navy)

Domain category:

armed forces; armed services; military; military machine; war machine (the military forces of a nation)

Derivation:

lieutenancy (the position of a lieutenant)

 Context examples 

Do you know, lieutenant, how many oaks go to make an eighty-gun ship?

(Rodney Stone, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

Once, however, the lieutenant asked why he had come so far upon the ice in so strange a vehicle.

(Frankenstein, by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley)

Out we ran, and there on the poop were the lieutenant and ten of his men.

(The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

Fortune came, his prize-money as lieutenant being great; promotion, too, came at last; but Fanny Harville did not live to know it.

(Persuasion, by Jane Austen)

I begin to think I shall never be a lieutenant, Fanny.

(Mansfield Park, by Jane Austen)

But where Silver stood with his lieutenant, all was still in shadow, and they waded knee-deep in a low white vapour that had crawled during the night out of the morass.

(Treasure Island, by Robert Louis Stevenson)

But McArdle was his first lieutenant, and it was he that we knew.

(The Lost World, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

Mrs. Phillips was quite awed by such an excess of good breeding; but her contemplation of one stranger was soon put to an end by exclamations and inquiries about the other; of whom, however, she could only tell her nieces what they already knew, that Mr. Denny had brought him from London, and that he was to have a lieutenant's commission in the —shire.

(Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen)

Perhaps he voted for somebody, or lent money to somebody, or bought something of somebody, or otherwise obliged somebody, or jobbed for somebody, who knew somebody who got the lieutenant of the county to nominate him for the commission.

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)

In it Sir Claude Latour, the Gascon lieutenant of the White Company, assured him that there remained in his keeping enough to fit out a hundred archers and twenty men-at-arms, which, joined to the three hundred veteran companions already in France, would make a force which any leader might be proud to command.

(The White Company, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)