War Secretary
- noun
- /wɔr ˈsɛkrəˌtɛri/
- Formal
:
Secretario de Guerra
- The War Secretary Edwin Stanton was instrumental in the Union's strategy during the Civil War.
Examples
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Stanton Lincolns war secretary, came by one day and he was furious at a general.
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This is our War secretary, Mr. Edwin Stanton.
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If our founding fathers had desired tyranny to prevail, the president and his War secretary would have been granted such indiscriminate powers, but they drafted a Constitution with laws against such powers.
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After the resignation of his predecessor, President Lincoln appointed a new War Secretary to oversee military operations.
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During his tenure as War Secretary, Henry Stimson advocated for a stronger military presence abroad.
Synonyms
181
4.6
The person in the United States government who is in charge of the military and advises the President
71
3.9
A senior United States government leader in charge of the military
7
8.6
Person in charge of the United States Army until 1947 when the job moved to the Secretary of Defense
Surface Forms
Morphology
The meaning is directly derivable from the constituents: 'war' identifies the domain and 'secretary' denotes a senior official, so a B1 learner who knows both words can infer a secretary responsible for war affairs. This is a regular noun–noun compositional pattern found across languages and is not idiomatic or metaphorical, so it is transparent despite the historical institutional detail.
Etymology
War Secretary comes from a simple image: a top Secretary at a desk with files marked War, writing orders and running the war office. So War Secretary meant the 'head of the Department of War', a job that was later combined into the 'Secretary of Defense'.