25 April 2015
soldier
[sohl-jer]
noun
1. a person who serves in an army; a person engaged in military service.
2. an enlisted man or woman, as distinguished from a commissioned officer:
the soldiers’ mess and the officers’ mess.
3. a person of military skill or experience:
George Washington was a great soldier.
4. a person who contends or serves in any cause:
a soldier of the Lord.
5. Also called button man. Slang. a low-ranking member of a crime organization or syndicate.
6. Entomology.
a member of a caste of sexually underdeveloped female ants or termites specialized, as with powerful jaws, to defend the colony from invaders.
a similar member of a caste of worker bees, specialized to protect the hive.
7. a brick laid vertically with the narrower long face out.
Compare rowlock (def 2).
verb (used without object)
9. to act or serve as a soldier.
10. Informal. to loaf while pretending to work; malinger:
He was soldiering on the job.
Verb phrases
11. soldier on, to persist steadfastly in one’s work; persevere:
to soldier on until the work is done.
Origin of soldier
Middle English, Old French
1250-1300; Middle English souldiour < Old French soudier, so (l) dier, equivalent to soulde pay (< Latin solidus; see sol2) + -ier -ier2
Related forms
soldiership, noun
nonsoldier, noun
Dictionary.com
Examples from the web for soldier
– With the introduction of the bayonet, each soldier could be both pikeman and musketeer.
– There’s the shopworn military cliche about every soldier being a sensor.
– They used the captured scientist and soldier avatars as hostages when the military approached.
Anagram
red soil
or slide
re idols
Today’s aphorism
The supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy without fighting.
– Sun Tzu
On this day
25 April – Anzac Day. National day of remembrance for Australia and New Zealand to commemorate ANZACs who fought at Gallipoli during World War I, honouring all service-men and women who served their country.
25 April – World Penguin Day.
25 April 1915 – World War I: the battle of Gallipoli begins, when Australian, New Zealand, British and French forces invade Turkey’s Gallipoli Peninsula, landing at Cape Helles, and what is now called Anzac Cove. The attack followed a failed British attempt on 18 March 1915 to seize Constantinople by sailing a fleet into the Dardenelle Straits. The Turks laid naval mines and sank three British ships. The Gallipoli Campaign resulted in the deaths of 56,643 Turks, 56,707 allies, which included 34,072 from Britain, 9,798 from France, 8,709 from Australia, 2,721 from New Zealand, 1,358 from British India, 49 from Newfoundland. More than 107,000 Turks and 123,000 allies were injured. The Gallipoli Campaign is seen as a defining moment in the national histories of both Australia and Turkey.
25 April 1983 – American schoolgirl, Samantha Smith, is invited to the Soviet Union after its leader, Yuri Andropov, reads her letter expressing her fears of nuclear war.