police captain
15
3.3
- noun
- /pəˈlis ˈkæptɪn/
- US
- 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
∞
2.9
An officer in the army, navy, or police who is in charge of others
How Senior
48
4.6
145
3.2
- US
15
3.3
- US
9
3.7
11
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.