Other forms: soldiers, soldiering, soldiered
A soldier is a person who serves in an army. Picture the uniform, the heavy boots, the pack on the back, and someone one rank up giving the order to move.
Soldier belongs to armies on land. In the air force you serve as an airman, at sea as a sailor, and a marine is a marine — call any of them a soldier and you will be corrected. The word carries a verb too: to soldier on is to keep going through something miserable without complaining, and it has nothing to do with the army. A foot soldier is the lowest-ranking one, and by extension anyone who does the unglamorous work of a campaign. Toy soldiers are the little painted ones a child lines up along the edge of the carpet.
1nounsoldierA person who serves in an army, especially one below officer rank.~98%
“Two soldiers stood at either side of the gate.”
2verbcarryIn soldier on: to carry on through difficulty without giving up.~2%
“His knee hurt all week but he soldiered on to the end of the season.”
Shares are an estimate: a language model read 23 sentences found in the wild and placed 22 of them on a sense (1 were unclear) — a count of our sample, not a measurement of English.
soldier is a member of an army.
Soldier arrived as Middle English soudeour, from Old French soudier, a mercenary — a man who fought for pay. Behind that sits Medieval Latin soldarius, 'one having pay', from Latin solidus, the name of a coin. The soldier was named for the money before the loyalty.
Latin
solidus
Medieval Latin
soldarius — soldier (one having pay)
Old French
soudier
Middle English
soudeour
English, today
soldier
Built from
Middle English soudeour, from Old French soudier or soudeour (“mercenary”), from Medieval Latin soldarius (“soldier (one having pay)”), from Latin solidus, a type of coin. Displaced Old English cempa (whence obsolete kemp). red herring An allusion to soldiers' red uniforms; red herring is, reciprocally, a slang term for "soldier".
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA