# subaltern

Pronunciation: US say "sub-AWL-tern" /sʌbˈɔltəɹn/; UK say "SUB-uhl-tuhn" /ˈsʌb.əltən/

## Noun

1. A commissioned officer below the rank of captain, such as a lieutenant or second lieutenant. *(British)*
   - Simple: A junior officer in the armed forces with a rank below captain, such as a lieutenant.
   - _Fresh from Sandhurst, she joined the battalion as a subaltern and was given a platoon._
   - _The mess was loud with subalterns celebrating the end of the exercise._
3. Someone of lower rank who works under another person's authority.
   - Simple: A person who works under someone else and takes orders from them.
   - _No subaltern in the department dared to question the director's figures._
   - _The minister left the unpopular details to his subalterns and took the credit himself._
4. A member of a group shut out, socially, politically and geographically, from the dominant power structure of both a colony and the colonial homeland.
   - Simple: A person from a group left out of power in a colony and in the country that rules it.
   - _The novel gives its narrative voice to a subaltern, a landless laborer whose story the colonial records ignored._
   - _Her research recovers petitions written by subalterns who never appear in the official archive._
5. In logic, a proposition that is implied by a universal proposition.
   - Simple: In logic, a statement that follows from a matching statement about all things of a kind.
   - _If a universal proposition is true, its subaltern must be true as well._
   - _On the square of opposition, each universal claim sits directly above its subaltern._

## Adjective

2. Lower in rank or position; secondary or inferior, and especially, in the military, holding a junior officer's rank below captain.
   - Simple: Lower in rank or less important, especially as an army officer below a captain.
   - _After losing the leadership race, she was offered only a subaltern role in the new cabinet._
   - _Every subaltern officer in the battalion had to pass the same course before promotion to captain._
6. Of a proposition, asserting only part of what a related proposition asserts.
   - Simple: Saying only part of what another, related statement says.
   - _For each general premise, the students had to state the subaltern conclusion that follows from it._
   - _Her objection targeted the universal premise, so she left the subaltern claim untouched._

## Origin

From Middle French subalterne, from Late Latin subalternus, formed from Latin sub- + alternus, which comes from alter.

Source: DictionaryAI, https://dictionaryai.com/define/subaltern (written from Wiktionary data, CC BY-SA 4.0: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/).