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English colonel is pronounced the same as kernel. This seems odd, but there is an explanation. In many languages when a word contains two identical or similar sounds, one of these sounds will often change over a period of time. This kind of change is called dissimilation. So when the Italian word colonello was taken into French, it became coronel; and the word was borrowed by the English from the French in this form. Later the spelling colonel came to be used in order to reflect the Italian origin of the word. But by then the pronunciation with r was well established.
Examples of colonel in a Sentence
Meg Kinnard, Los Angeles Times, 12 Jan. 2025
Lieutenant colonels from Russia's 76th Pskov Division of the Russian Airborne Forces, Valery Tereshchenko and Pavel Maletsky were killed in the Ukrainian missile strike on the Russian military HQ on December 30, it was reported.
—Tommy Tuberville, Newsweek, 9 Jan. 2025
Hague, a 49-year-old Space Force colonel, is a veteran of one long-duration mission on the International Space Station and also experienced a rare in-flight launch abort in 2018 due to a failure of a Russian Soyuz rocket.
—Nick Dedeke, Ars Technica, 28 Sep. 2024
Another 200 on average passed daily into the strip from the center and south of Gaza, the colonel said.
—Josh Hammer, Newsweek, 23 Dec. 2024
See all Example Sentences for colonel 
Dictionary Entries Near colonel
Cite this Entry
“Colonel.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/colonel. Accessed 26 Jan. 2025.
Copy CitationKids Definition
an altered form of earlier coronel "colonel," from early French coronel (same meaning), from early Italian colonnello "colonel, column of soldiers," derived from Latin columna "column" — related to column
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