Secretary of War
7
8.6
- noun
- /ˈsɛkrəˌtɛri əv wɔr/
- Archaic
:
Secretario de Guerra
- Shortly after 11 p.m., Secretary of War, Edwin Stanton, sets up a headquarters in the back parlor of the house, and establishes relays between there and the War Department telegraph operators.
- Secretary of War Henry Stimson
- Secretary of War Newton Baker
- Secretary of War Robert Patterson
Examples
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It is close to 10:00 p.m. when Secretary of War Stanton delivers to Lincoln the telegram reporting that Robert E. Lee has surrendered.
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In the meantime, Congress directed the Secretary of War to have the Army Corps of Engineers investigate the debris problem.
Academic text (1994) -
Except for the copy I sent to the Secretary of War.
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The wife of the Secretary of War of the United States.
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However, we did hear from the president through his Secretary of War by letter.
Fiction book (1994) -
In any case, President Davis was for all practical purposes his own Secretary of War
Fiction book (1992) -
Following the conflict, Secretary of War Henry Stimson commented:
Academic text (1993) -
Dorothea Dix was named Superintendent of the Women Nurses of the U.S. Army by the Secretary of War.
Academic text (2005) -
The Secretary of War repeatedly cautioned Wool and Lindsay to avoid offending state authorities.
Academic text (2011) -
In 1945, the Secretary of War announced plans for post-war military restructuring.
Synonyms
A government official who led the United States Department of War before 1947
Surface Forms
Morphology
The phrase is directly compositional: 'secretary' (a senior official) + 'of' + 'war' indicates an official responsible for war/military affairs, following the common 'head of X' pattern. This construction is cross-linguistically familiar, so a B1 learner who knows the constituent words can infer it denotes the government official in charge of war-related matters (though the specific historical US office detail is extra background).
Etymology
Secretary of War comes from older government practice where the word secretary named the top official who ran the department that managed the army and war. So the name literally meant the person 'in charge of war', and that job later became part of the 'Secretary of Defense'.