I've been trying to confirm my intuition that the rank "General" is actually "Captain General" and this led me to fact that Admiral is actually Sea Emir.
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"General" is from "General Officer" if I recall. Bscl the same idea of "Captain General"; an officer for everyone "in general" and so the highest ranking one. Could be wrong tho it's been awhile since I looked into it.
Further back it comes from `genus` and `generalis` which had broader meaning, but it was narrowed when first borrowed into English from French?
English is odd.
According to Wiktionary, Escalator was a brand name created after the Latin word scala, meaning staircase or ladder. That word went down naturally to Romance languages, but not to English, as it seems. English has the word scale, though.
But in Portuguese "escalar" (to climb up, especially a mountain, and also to escalate) and "escala" (scale) existed long before escalators (which, curiously, are named "rolling stairs" in literal translation).
It's because escalator, in English, comes from a brand name. The brand name comes from scala (ladder, staircase), but there wasn't a cognate that meant to climb up until then. There was scale, as in size or musical scale, though.
or like how "captain" comes from "capitaneus", meaning "chieftain", originally from Proto-Indo-European "kaput" meaning "head". Which funnily enough we *still* use in its modern English to mean "person in charge"
In the Spanish sense you get to Captain-General. The basic unit of organization for a Spanish army was a company, headed by a captain. Commanding many companies you needed a captain of captains: Captain-General
Huh two independent ways to get there. In English I think we get “general” from the French concept of the general Officer (the guy in charge of all the things, not just a specific thing)
I'm not sure why "Solicitor General"/"Attorney General" /"Surgeon General" etc. didn't use "general" adjectivally at first but then develop "general" as a shorthand form of address that *also* handily signaled both rank and scope of jurisdiction (not unconnected) and made more sense than "Hey Buddy"
Yeah, people don't get that "captain" really means "head" e.g. why older military histories will talk about the "great captains." The Arabic - Latin interplay is also very fun, a lot more of that than people think. In the reverse direction, the currency name "dinar" derives from "denarius."
They may be wrong in the original etymology, but the distinction between "general" as a noun for a military leader but an adjective for a civil officer goes back centuries, and it is not limited to English.
German actually uses "general" both ways even in the military rank. Compare "Generalmajor" for major general to "General der Infanterie", a higher rank.
The problem is [Noun] + [Modifying Adjective] is grafted on from French. General Captain would work with English grammar, but given English's strict adjective rules, it makes sense to assume "General" is a noun in "Captain General" or "Lieutenant General"
English grammar rules around adjectives are *very* fixed too. The Royal Order of Adjectives is one my favorite things virtually every native speaker's brain knows, but but they couldn't tell you a thing about.
The Admiral thing struck me because of course "Captain General" sounds like what you would call a guy who has general command of many ships, so why Admiral, and it's because people had to fight some Saracens.
If it's from French, they were often allied with the Ottomans & the Ottomans' North African vassals. Including combining their fleets against the Hapsburgs
"Lieutenant General" outranks a "Major General" even though a Major outranks a Lieutenant because "Major General" is short for "Sergeant Major General."
When I was in Spain, I saw a statue of a guy called 'El Gran Capitan,' kneeling before Ferdinand and Isabella. I just sort of assumed he was Columbus, until I looked it up and found out he was a senior general.
This makes sense to me, but I don't know how you explain "lieutenant general" outranking "major general". Really seems like it should go "lieutenant general" -> "captain general" -> "major general".
I believe it’s a shortening of the term “General Officer” meaning an officer with broad authority. An attorney general or solicitor general is also someone with broad authority, so calling them “General” follows the same tradition.
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Bonus: https://emuseum.vassar.edu/objects/5366/his-excy-george-washington-esq-captain-general-of-the-ame
English is odd.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%A9n%C3%A9ral
Or French "procureur générale" to "général de [formation]".
And also how do you have time for this? 😁
https://bsky.app/profile/1dgrn.bsky.social/post/3lsi3ijzdws24