Lieutenant (abbreviated Lt. or Lieut.) is a military, naval, paramilitary, fire service, emergency medical services or police officer rank.

Lieutenant may also appear as part of a title used in various other organizations with a codified command structure. It often designates someone who is "second-in-command," and as such, may precede the name of the rank directly above it. For example, a "Lieutenant Master" is likely to be second-in-command to the "Master" in an organization utilizing both such ranks. Notable uses include Lieutenant Governor in various governments, and Quebec lieutenant in Quebecois politics.

Etymology

The word lieutenant derives from French; the lieu meaning "place" as in a position; and tenant meaning "holding" as in "holding a position"; thus a "lieutenant" is somebody who holds a position in the absence of his or her superior (compare the cognate Latin locum tenens). The Arabic word for lieutenant, mulāzim ( ), also means "holding a place".

The British monarch's representatives in the counties of the United Kingdom are called Lords Lieutenant. The Lord Lieutenant of Ireland performed the function of viceroy in Ireland. In French history, "lieutenant du roi" was a title borne by the officer sent with military powers to represent the king in certain provinces. It is in the sense of a deputy that it has entered into the titles of more senior officers, Lieutenant General and Lieutenant Colonel.

In the nineteenth century those British writers who either considered this word an imposition on the English language or difficult for common soldiers and sailors argued for it to be replaced by the calque "steadholder" but failed and the French word is still used as well as its Lieutenant-Colonel variation in both the Old and the New World.

Pronunciation

In contemporary American English, the word is usually (Audio).Oxford English Dictionary.American Heritage Dictionary, s.v. "Lieutenant".. In 1791, English lexicographer John Walker lamented that the "regular sound" – /lju'tɛnənt/ – was not in general employ, giving the pronunciation current at the time as /lɛv'tɛnənt/ or /lɪv'tɛnənt/. This is still the dominant pronunciation in English-speaking countries outside the USA.

Walker's prescriptive pronunciation – which represents the regular English naturalization of the modern French word – took hold in the United States over the course of the nineteenth century; while an American dictionary of 1813 gives /lɛv'tɛnənt/J. R. Clemens, American Speech 7 (1932), 438. and New Yorker Richard Grant White, born in 1822, claimed never to have heard the /lju-/ form in his youth,H. L. Mencken, The American Language, 1921; 4th edition (1936), p. 345. the /lɛv-/ or /lɛf-/ form was by 1893 considered old-fashioned. The great influence exercised on American English by Noah Webster, who insisted (but inconsistently) on the congruence of orthography and pronunciation, may be partly responsible for the eventual triumph of the "regular" pronunciation in the United States.The Maven's Word of the Day, 7 January 2000.