echelon

Etymology

It is borrowed from French échelon (“level, echelon; literally, rung of a ladder”),^[2][3][4][5] from Old French eschelon, from eschiele (“ladder”), also eschele,^[2][6][7] from Late Latin scāla (“ladder, stair, slope”),^[2][3][6] a back-formation from Latin scālae (“steps, ladder”), a plural.^[7][2][3] The Old French word was a diminutive of eschele,^[6] or the ladder word with the noun suffix -on;^[8] Hoad and the Shorter Oxford derive it from French échelle (“ladder”) and compare the suffix -oon.^[9][10] Etymonline traces the Latin word to Proto-Indo-European *skand- (“to spring, leap”),^[2][7] and the Late Latin word is also the source of scale in the sense of a graded series.^[6][11] Weekley called the ladder etymology the usual explanation, but noted an archaic sense of French échelle, a body of troops, in Old French eschiele or eschiere, which he connected with Old High German scār (“band, troop”) and with share.^[12]

Earliest recorded meaning

A formation of troops in which each division is placed parallel to the one in front but offset to one side, so that no two stand on the same line: 1796, in the army's Instructions and Regulations for the Formations and Movements of troops.^[5][3][2] Etymonline gives the early spelling echellon.^[2] Merriam-Webster also dates the noun to 1796,^[4] while Dictionary.com puts it in 1790–1800.^[8]

Semantic evolution

In French the word for a ladder rung had developed several figurative senses from the 13th century on, and English took over only the military one, a steplike arrangement of troops.^[6] From 1807 the word was also used for one of the divisions of an army marching in such a formation,^[5] and it was later applied to similar arrangements of aircraft and ships.^[6] In military use the general sense of a level or subdivision was probably established in English during World War I, and perhaps earlier in French;^[3][2][8] the OED records echelon for each subdivision behind the main supply service from 1922.^[5] By World War II the word had spread to the grades of the civil service and other professions:^[3][8] the OED's first record of a grade or rank in an administration is from the New York Times in 1950, and it notes that the sense was originally American.^[5] Phrases such as the upper echelons let a hierarchy be pictured as the rungs of a ladder, much as the word's French source did.^[8][13] Middle English had borrowed the Old French word for a troop of fighting men, eschele, recorded from about 1330 in Arthour and Merlin,^[14][3] but that use is not found after 1500.^[3] The verb, to arrange troops in echelon, is from the noun or from French échelonner; the OED's first records are figurative (1859) and military (1864),^[5][10] and Merriam-Webster dates it to about 1860.^[4]

Timeline

• 1796 – a steplike formation of troops, spelled echellon.^[5][2][3]
• 1807 – one of the divisions of an army marching in such a formation.^[5]
• 1859 – verb, figurative, to arrange in steps or at intervals.^[5]
• 1864 – verb, to arrange troops in echelon.^[5]
• 1922 – a subdivision behind the main supply service of an army.^[5]
• 1950 – a grade or rank in an administration or profession, originally in American use.^[5]

Meanings

Noun

1. A level of rank, authority or responsibility in an organization or society, or the people at that level: the upper echelons of the civil service.^[13][7][15]
2. (military) A formation of troops, ships or aircraft in which each unit is placed to the left or right of the one behind it, like a series of steps.^[13][7][4]
3. (military) A subdivision of a military force, distinguished by its position or function: a rear echelon.^[7][15]
4. (physics) A diffraction grating made of plates of equal thickness stacked in steps, used in spectroscopy.^[13]

Verb

1. To arrange troops, vehicles or the like in an echelon, or to take up such a position.^[4][13][10]

Word family

• echelonment
• rear echelon

Related words

• scale

References

1. ^ a b Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h i Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
3. ^ a b c d e f g h i Barnhart, Robert K. (1988), The Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology
4. ^ a b c d e Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
5. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
6. ^ a b c d e f Merriam-Webster's Book of Word Histories, Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
7. ^ a b c d e f The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (online 2024), 5th ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
8. ^ a b c d e Dictionary.com Unabridged (2016), based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, New York: Random House
9. ^ Hoad, T. F., ed. (1986), The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology, Oxford: Clarendon Press
10. ^ a b c Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
11. ^ Klein, Ernest. A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the English Language. 2 vols. Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1966–1967.
12. ^ Weekley, Ernest (1921), An Etymological Dictionary of Modern English, London: John Murray
13. ^ a b c d e Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins
14. ^ Kurath, Hans; Kuhn, Sherman M.; Lewis, Robert E., eds. (1952–2001), Middle English Dictionary, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press; online edition ed. Frances McSparran et al. (2000–2018)
15. ^ a b Stevenson, Angus, ed. (2010), Oxford Dictionary of English, 3rd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press