general headquarters
- noun
- /ˈdʒɛnərəl ˈhɛdˌkwɔrtərz/
- Specialized
:
cuartel general
- I want you to take this dispatch to general headquarters and wait there until further orders.
Examples
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So you thought general headquarters were the only ones in the know, but I, too, knew that Surat Khan was with Volonoff on the Balaklava Heights.
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The two countries attempted to block the general headquarters of the U.S. occupation force from approving Japan's resumption of Antarctic whaling in the hope of building their own whaling industries.
Academic text (2002) -
I have received the following from general headquarters...
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Orders from General headquarters, sir.
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If I have to wait at general headquarters, I'll be out of the fight altogether.
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Outside the general headquarters of UNPROFOR, the United Nations Protection.
Fiction book (1999) -
General headquarters, army of the Crimea.
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Wait at general headquarters?
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But Yael had come with him straight to the Ramle base, where Sam Pasternak had set up Moshe Dayan's general headquarters, and she had been working day and night ever since.
Fiction book (1993) -
The commander issued new directives from general headquarters to prepare for the upcoming mission.
Synonyms
111
3.0
The place where military leaders direct troops and give orders
36
3.4
The main office where an organization's leaders work and give orders
27
5.3
A place where a military leader directs soldiers during an operation
4
3.5
A building where military leaders plan and control operations
The main office where military leaders organize and send orders
How Centralized
Surface Forms
Morphology
The meaning is directly compositional: 'general' (senior military officer) + 'headquarters' (central command unit) yields the main command center associated with a general. This construction is cross-linguistically common (e.g., French 'quartier général', Spanish 'cuartel general') and follows standard noun–noun/attributive patterns, so a B1 learner who knows the constituents will understand it.
Etymology
General headquarters comes from the image of the top officer, the general, working in the main 'head' room or 'quarters' where plans are made and orders are sent. So it now means the central place that 'controls' and 'organizes' the army.