Word.ws English Dictionary

drill instructor

drill instructor noun: the generic term for the principal instructor of fresh military recruits undergoing basic training in the various branches of the United States military, routinely abbreviated to the initialism DI; always filled by enlisted personnel (a sergeant or petty officer).

drill instructor: the generic term for the principal instructor of fresh military recruits undergoing basic training...
Image: Corporal Shawn M. Toussaint, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Noun

drill instructor (plural drill instructors)

  1. (US) The generic term for the principal instructor of fresh military recruits undergoing basic training in the various branches of the United States military, routinely abbreviated to the initialism DI; always filled by enlisted personnel (a sergeant or petty officer).
    • Army: drill sergeant
    • Navy: recruit division commander

Forms of drill instructor

pluraldrill instructors

Questions about drill instructor

What does drill instructor mean?
Drill instructor means the generic term for the principal instructor of fresh military recruits undergoing basic training in the various branches of the United States military, routinely abbreviated to the initialism DI; always filled by enlisted personnel (a sergeant or petty officer).
What part of speech is drill instructor?
Drill instructor is a noun.
What is the plural of drill instructor?
The plural of drill instructor is drill instructors.

Words near drill instructor in the dictionary

  1. drill hall
  2. drill halls
  3. drill hoe
  4. drill hoes
  5. drill in
  6. drill instructor
  7. drill instructors
  8. drill jig
  9. drill jigs
  10. drill out
  11. drill pipe

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: drill instructor (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “drill instructor.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/drill_instructor. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.