Other forms: echelons
An echelon is one level in a ranked organisation. The upper echelons, the higher echelons of power, every echelon.
It is nearly always plural and nearly always about the top: the upper echelons is the standing phrase. The military sense is a formation in which units are staggered like the rungs of a ladder, and the French inside it means a rung.
1nounechelonOne level in a ranked organisation.
“Only the upper echelons of the company knew about the secret plan.”
echelon is a level.
The French word behind it means ladder. An echelon is one rung of it: one level, with people above you and people below.
hooks ontoladder
French echelon means a rung, from echelle, a ladder, from Latin scala.
Proto-Indo-European
*skend- — to jump
Latin
scāla — ladder
French
échelon — rung; echelon
English, today
echelon
Built from
French échelon (“rung; echelon”), from échelle (“ladder”) + -on. Échelle is derived from Latin scāla (“ladder”), from scandō (“to ascend, climb”), from Proto-Indo-European skend- (“to jump”).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA