11-30-2008, 01:00 AM
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#3 (permalink)
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Getting it.
Super Moderator
Location: Lion City
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Colonel = http://tinyurl.com/69uexc
Quote:
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It’s a messy story, the result of a confusion between two forms of the word that came into English at different times. Its source is the Italian "colonna". This, and and the English word "column" with the same meaning, derive from the Latin "columna", because a column of men was reminiscent of the shape of a pillar. There was an phrase in Italian, "compagna colonnella", literally the “little-column company”, which referred to the small company of soldiers that marched at the head of a regiment and which was commanded directly by the officer in charge. So that officer became known as the "colonnello", the leader of the little column. This shifted into French as "coronel" but later changed back nearer the Italian original as "colonel". Much the same thing happened in English, where coronel was the more common form up to about 1630. For a while after this date both forms were in use until colonel eventually won. At first the word was pronounced as three syllables, but the middle became swallowed, and under the continuing influence of the “r” spelling the “l” in the first syllable vanished.
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