police captain
10
3.3
- noun
- /pəˈlis ˈkæptɪn/
- US
:
capitán de policía
- After years of hard work, Maria was finally promoted to police captain, taking charge of a major precinct.
Examples
-
The police captain motions to Ramirez to follow him.
Fiction book (1997) -
He's a police captain.
-
I get a police captain coming down here twice, in one day.
-
Unfortunately... a police captain is on his way to interview each and every one of you.
-
We need to alert local authorities, and get the police captain on the phone.
-
A retired police captain, Williams has been a city council member since 2001 and became mayor in 2004.
Academic text (2005) -
Take it from this Harvard-educated retired police captain.
Blog text (6) -
That's Sanchez, the police captain.
-
Your police captain told me that you've solved every case that you've ever been assigned.
-
A police captain with 30 years experience and a crowd of federal agents just had to know that with no record anything that Oswald says is gonna be inadmissible in court.
Synonyms
247
2.9
An officer in the army, navy, or police who is in charge of others
How Senior
27
4.6
93
3.2
- US
10
3.3
- US
4
3.7
6
3.1
- UK
1
2.8
Surface Forms
Morphology
The phrase is fully compositional: 'police' specifies the organization and 'captain' names a high-ranking officer, so a learner who knows both words can infer 'a high-ranking police officer in charge of a unit or precinct.' This head+modifier noun pattern is common across languages and follows normal English noun compounding, making the meaning transparent to a B1 learner.
Etymology
Police captain comes from joining police and captain, where captain was the word for a leader on a ship or in the army. The image of a captain giving orders makes it easy to see why a police captain is the officer 'in charge' of a precinct or a large police unit.