Admiral

Admiral is a military rank, typically the highest or among the highest flag officers in a navy. In the armed forces of the United States and Commonwealth of Nations, an admiral—sometimes clarified as a "full admiral"—is the equivalent of a general in the army or air force. NATO codes place admirals or their equivalents at OF-9, behind only the infrequently awarded rank of fleet admirals (US) or admirals of the fleet (CON) and just above vice-admirals. In premodern contexts, admiral is also used as an informal rank for any commander-in-chief of a navy or major fleet.

For other uses, see Admiral (disambiguation).

Name[edit]

The English rank of admiral developed from a variety of Early Modern and Middle English forms borrowed from still more Norman, Middle, and Old French and Medieval Latin forms, all ultimately derived from Arabic emir (أَمِير, ʾamīr) meaning "commander".^[1] The form admiral has been standard since the 18th century, a form attested in Norman and Middle French since the mid-13th century, derived from Latin admiralis, admirallus, and admiralius common since the 12th century after alteration of amiralis—Arabic ʾamīr with the Latin suffix -ālis—under influence from the Latin prefix ad-, particularly in admīrāri ("to admire, to respect").^[1] Owing to the similarity of the Latin suffix to the Arabic definite article al- (ال), the word is frequently folk etymologized to derive from various longer Arabic phrases,^[2] particularly ʾamīr al-baḥr (أَمِير اَلْبَحْر, "commander of the sea"),^[3]^[4]^[5]^[6]^[7]^[8]^[9] ʾamīr al-umarāʾ (أمير الأمراء, "commander-in-chief"), or Amīr al-Muʾminīn (أَمِيْر ٱلْمُؤْمِنِيْن, "Commander of the Believers").^[1] Despite the first having been a position in the 10th-century Fatimid navy,^[10] the second a Sicilian title used for George of Antioch in the 12th century that was latinized as ammiratus ammiratorum by the 13th century,^[11] and the last being attested in Latin in the form Amiralmumin from the 9th century,^[1] the derivation of the modern title is known to have developed solely from ʾamīr within Latin.^[1]^[2] A separate mistaken derivation was offered by Henry Todd's 1818 edition of Samuel Johnson's Dictionary, which conjectured that the rank had come from combining ʾamīr with some form of the Greek hálios (ἅλιος, "marine").^[12]

In modern English, the term admiral is also widely used in translation or explanation of any similar rank in any navy historical or contemporary, including the Ottoman Kapudan Pasha (literally "Lord Captain"), East Asian ranks literally equating to "general", and the Cromwellian Parliamentary Navy's own "general at sea".^[13]