echelon
Syllables: ech·e·lon/ˈeɪ-/UK/ˈɛʃ.ə.lɒn/
echelon noun: a level or rank in an organization, profession, or society.
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Noun
echelon (plural echelons)
- A level or rank in an organization, profession, or society.
- Other important functions performed by the GP [general practitioner] are those of referring patients to other (health) care facilities and acting as contact person for other providers of aid, both for other facilities in first echelon care and with respect to second echelon care (outpatient care...1987, “Scenario A: The Reference Scenario”, in C. F. Hollander, H. A. Becker, editors, Growing Old in the Future: Scenarios on Health and Ageing 1984–2000: Scenario-report, Commissioned by the...
- Officials in China are divided into three echelons, or generations. The first echelon joined the Communist Party in the 1920s, soon after the party was founded. […] The second echelon joined the Communist Party before the founding of the People's Republic of China in 1949. The party was then still...2004, Alfred Kuo-liang Ho, “Deng’s Political Reforms”, in China’s Reforms and Reformers, Westport, Conn.: Praeger Publishers, Greenwood Publishing Group, →ISBN, page 120
- Synonyms:
- rung
- A line of riders seeking maximum drafting in a crosswind, resulting in a diagonal line across the road.
- In an echelon, in which several cyclists are sitting in on one another, each rider takes his turn of about 200 meters at the front before dropping to the rear.1972, Journal of the American Association for Health, Physical Education, and Recreation, volume 43, [Washington, D.C.]: American Association for Health, Physical Education, and Recreation, →OCLC...
- Cyclists in an echelon take up more room in the traffic lane than they do when riding single or double file.1989, Fred Matheny, Bicycling Magazine’s Complete Guide to Riding and Racing Techniques, Emmaus, Pa.: Rodale Press, →ISBN, page 99
- A formation of troops, ships, aircraft, etc., in diagonal parallel rows.
- The troops selected by his Royal Highness for this daring exploit, consisted of the war battalions of the 3d, 6th, and 7th regiments of the Royal Guard, forming the first echelon, […]1833 October, “a royalist”, “Sketches of the War of the French in Spain in the Year 1823”, in The United Service Journal and Naval and Military Magazine, part III, number 59, London: Published for...
- The order in echelons is favorable for attack, because it readily conforms to the nature of the ground, and does not necessitate engaging more than a part of the forces; it is adopted for the purpose of attacking a particular point of the enemy's line.1863, Ed. [Édouard] De La Barre Duparcq, “Infantry Formation and Tactics”, in George W[ashington] Cullum, transl., Elements of Military Art and History: Comprising the History and Tactics of the...
Verb
echelon (third-person singular simple present echelons, present participle echeloning, simple past and past participle echeloned)
- To form troops into an echelon.
- July 1, Montcalm made a movement in advance, echeloning his troops from Fort Carillon to the foot of Lake George, to curb the enemy, and obstruct their landing.1860, François-Xavier Garneau, “Battle of Carillon (Ticonderoga). 1758.”, in Andrew Bell, transl., History of Canada, from the Time of Its Discovery till the Union Year (1840–1): Translated from...
- Behind the 17th Panzer Division the corps echeloned the main force of its other division, the 16th Panzer Division.1968, Earl F[rederick] Ziemke, “Offensives on Both Flanks—the South Flank”, in Stalingrad to Berlin: The German Defeat in the East (Army Historical Series), Washington, D.C.: Office of the Chief of...
Adjective
echelon (not comparable)
- Of a matrix: having undergone Gaussian elimination with the result that the leading coefficient or pivot (that is, the first nonzero number from the left) of a nonzero row is to the right of the pivot of the row above it, giving rise to a stepped appearance in the matrix.
- An echelon matrix is a matrix, not necessarily square, with the following two properties: (i) There is at least one non-zero entry; rows consisting entirely of zeros, if any, lie below rows with at least one non-zero entry. (ii) In each non-zero row after the first, the left-most non-zero entry...2001, Malcolm Pemberton, Nicholas Rau, “Systems of Linear Equations”, in Mathematics for Economists: An Introductory Textbook, Manchester; New York, N.Y.: Manchester University Press, →ISBN, section...
Proper noun capitalized: Echelon
Echelon
- An international SIGINT network to monitor and gather intelligence from satellite trunk communications.
echelon meaning in Tamil, Malayalam, Kannada and Indonesian
echelon in Tamil
- எச்சலன், எச்செலன்
echelon in Malayalam
- rank, level, grade
- അധികാരതലം, ശ്രേണി, അധികാരശ്രേണി, തലം, നില, അണി
echelon in Kannada
- ಮೆಟ್ಟಲು ಸಾಲು, ಸೋಪಾನ, ಸೋಪಾನ ವ್ಯೂಹ, ಅಧಿಕಾರಿ ವರ್ಗಶ್ರೇಣಿ, ಅಳವಿಗ ಮಟ್ಟ
echelon in Indonesian
- level or rank
- eselon
- (military) formation of troops
- eselon
More languagesFewer languages
- echelon in Persian
- پله pelle
Examples of echelon in a sentence
- Officials in China are divided into three echelons, or generations.2004, Alfred Kuo-liang Ho, “Deng’s Political Reforms”, in China’s Reforms and Reformers, Westport, Conn.: Praeger Publishers, Greenwood...
- “The first echelon of the Russian force was stuck without heat, without oil, without bombs and without gas.2022 March 28, Julian Borger, quoting Yaroslav Honchar, “The drone operators who halted Russian convoy headed for Kyiv”, in The Guardian:
Synonyms of echelon
Forms of echelon
| Noun | |
|---|---|
| plural | echelons |
| alternative form | échelon |
| Verb | |
| third-person singular present | echelons |
| present participle | echeloning |
| past participle | echeloned |
| past | echeloned |
Origin of echelon
Borrowed from French échelon (“rung; echelon”), from échelle (“ladder”) + -on (diminutive suffix). Échelle is derived from Latin scāla (“ladder”), from scandō (“to ascend, climb”), from Proto-Indo-European *skend- (“to jump”).
Words formed from echelon
Phrases with echelon
Questions about echelon
- What does echelon mean?
- Echelon means a level or rank in an organization, profession, or society.
- What is echelon in Tamil?
- Echelon in Tamil is எச்சலன், எச்செலன். See Echelon meaning in Tamil.
- How do you use echelon in a sentence?
- Officials in China are divided into three echelons, or generations.
- What part of speech is echelon?
- Echelon can be a noun, a verb, an adjective or a proper noun.
- How do you pronounce echelon?
- Echelon is pronounced /ˈɛʃ.ə.lɒn/ (UK).
- What is the plural of echelon?
- The plural of echelon is echelons.
Words near echelon in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: echelon (page history and authors); Echelon (page history and authors); echelon (Tamil Wiktionary) (page history and authors); echelon (Olam, E.K. Kurup corpus) (dataset and license); echelon (Kannada Wiktionary) (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.
Last updated:
Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: en-au-echelon.ogg.
Cite this entry: “echelon.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/echelon. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.