Other forms: captained, captains, captaining
The captain is the one who leads — the player wearing the armband who calls the coin toss, or the person in command of a ship. Look for whoever gives the orders and whoever gets the blame; that is the captain.
Three worlds use the word most. In sport the captain is a player, never the coach, and the job can be handed over or taken away. At sea the captain commands the ship, and the title carries into the air: this is your captain speaking. In the army and the police it is a rank sitting above a lieutenant, while in the navy a captain is a good deal more senior than that. It works as a verb — she captained the side for six seasons — and as a title before a name, Captain Reid.
1nouncaptainThe player who leads a sports team.~46%
“The captain won the toss and chose to bat.”
synonyms: skipper
2nouncommanderThe person in command of a ship or aircraft.~15%
“The captain ordered the crew to lower the sails.”
3nounofficerAn officer rank in the army, navy, air force or police.~31%
“He was made captain at thirty and colonel at forty.”
4verbleadTo lead a team, ship or crew as its captain.~8%
“He captained the school side for two years.”
Shares are an estimate: a language model read 13 sentences found in the wild and placed 13 of them on a sense — a count of our sample, not a measurement of English.
captain is a leader.
Latin caput meant head, and capitāneus was the head one, the chief. It came through Old French capitaine into Middle English capitain. The same French word reached English twice by different routes, so captain and chieftain are one word in two coats — and the captain of a team is still, quite literally, its head.
Proto-Indo-European
*kap-
Latin
capitāneus
Old French
capitaine
Middle English
capitain
English, today
captain
From Middle English capitain, capteyn, from Old French capitaine, from Latin capitāneus, from Latin caput (“head”) (English cap). Ultimately from Proto-Indo-European kap-. a doublet of chieftain, also from Old French.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA