colonnello

Italian colonnello meant the commander of a colonna — a column of soldiers. The word came from colonna, from Latin columna (column, pillar). In sixteenth-century Italian warfare, an army marched in columns, and the officer who led a column was the colonnello. The title was literal: you commanded a column. The word entered French as coronel, because French speakers swapped the first 'l' for an 'r' through a process called dissimilation — two similar sounds in a word tend to diverge.

English borrowed the word twice. From French, it took the pronunciation: coronel, with an 'r' in the middle. From Italian, it took the spelling: colonel, with an 'l.' Both forms circulated in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century English. The spelling eventually standardized on the Italian-influenced colonel, while the pronunciation kept the French-influenced 'kernel.' The result is one of the most notorious spelling-pronunciation mismatches in the English language.

The rank itself stabilized during the military reforms of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. A colonel commanded a regiment — typically 500 to 3,000 soldiers. The rank sat below brigadier general and above lieutenant colonel. In many armies, colonels held honorary command of regiments even after promotion to higher ranks. The British regimental system tied colonels to specific units for life, creating a personal bond between officer and regiment.

The pronunciation puzzle has never been resolved. English simply decided to spell the word one way and say it another. Generations of schoolchildren have tripped over it. Non-native English speakers find it baffling. The word is a permanent monument to the chaos that occurs when a language borrows from two sources simultaneously and refuses to choose between them.