civilian

Pluralcivilians

1. 1
   nouncountable

   A person who lives an ordinary civil life, especially someone who is not a member of the armed forces.

   The general ordered his troops to avoid harming any civilian.

   After leaving the army, he struggled to adjust to life as a civilian.

   Similarnoncombatant

   Oppositesoldier, combatant

   Note

   The word joins civil to -ian and reached Middle English as cyvylien, from Old French civilien. Its everyday force comes from contrast: a civilian is defined by not being a soldier. Prince George, writing in 1858 that an army can never be commanded or controlled by civilians, sets the two worlds in open opposition, and that soldier-versus-civilian frame is still how the word is usually heard.

2. 2
   adjective

   Belonging to ordinary life rather than the military, police, or other government professions.

   The pilot returned to civilian aviation after his service ended.

   Several officers took civilian jobs once their contracts expired.

   Similarcivil, nonmilitary

   Oppositemilitary

   Note

   As an adjective the word is not comparable: something is civilian or it is not, with nothing "more civilian" in between. It usually sits before its noun, as in civilian clothing or a civilian journalist, and its reach goes beyond the army, since it also excludes police and other government professions. That wider contrast is why a civilian journalist can be set against one employed by a public broadcaster.

3. 3
   nouncolloquialcountable

   A person outside a particular group or activity, regarded as not belonging to it.

   To the surfers, anyone who stayed on the beach was just a civilian.

   The band treated their manager like a civilian who didn't understand the music.

   Similaroutsider, layperson

   Oppositeinsider

   Note

   Informal speech carries the soldier's divide into any closed world: those inside a group call everyone else civilians. Eminem's "The Monster" (2013) imagines walking among fans as just another civilian, a famous person wishing to be ordinary. The word speaks from the insiders' point of view, borrowing its edge from the non-military meaning, so it suits conversation rather than formal writing.

4. 4
   nouncountable

   A person employed within the civil service, the body of government administrative staff.

   The empire's vast bureaucracy employed thousands of civilians across its provinces.

   A senior civilian in the ministry signed off on the annual budget.

   Similarofficial, bureaucrat, functionary

5. 5
   nouncountable

   A person skilled in the practice of civil law.

   The merchants hired a noted civilian to interpret the maritime statutes.

   A learned civilian was summoned to advise the court on the ecclesiastical case.

   Note

   Here the civil is that of civil law, the body of doctrine descended from Roman law, not the civil of ordinary life. When Jonathan Swift wrote of "ancient civilians and writers upon government" in 1724, he meant learned jurists, not people outside the army. In older prose like Swift's, the military reading is an easy trap, and the company the word keeps is the best guide to which sense is meant.

6. 6
   nouncountable

   A university or college student studying civil law.

   As a civilian at Oxford, she immersed herself in Roman legal texts.

   The college's civilians gathered to debate a tricky point of contract law.

   Note

   The academic counterpart of the civil-law jurist: a university student reading civil law, marked out by dress as well as by study. Richard Graves, in 1788, describes a man who "changed his commoner gown to that of a civilian," a reminder that the law student wore a distinct gown in college. Like the jurist's sense, it belongs to older writing about university life.

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