cadet

See also: Cadet

English

Etymology

Borrowed from French cadet, from Gascon capdet, from Late Latin capitellum (“small head”). Attested in English from 1634.^[1][2]

Doublet of caddie, cadel, capital, capitellum, caudillo, and Kadet.

Pronunciation

• (Received Pronunciation, General American) IPA^(key): /kəˈdɛt/

• Audio (General Australian):

  (file)

• Rhymes: -ɛt
• Hyphenation: ca‧det

Noun

cadet (plural cadets)

1. A student at a military school who is training to be an officer.
2. (chiefly history) A younger or youngest son, who would not inherit as a firstborn son would.
   • 1814 May 9, [Jane Austen], chapter V, in Mansfield Park: […], volume II, London: […] [George Sidney] for T[homas] Egerton, […], →OCLC, page 114:

     Bertram is certainly well off for a cadet of even a Baronet's family. By the time he is four or five and twenty he will have seven hundred a year, and nothing to do for it.

3. (in compounds, chiefly in genealogy) Junior. (See also the heraldic term cadency.)

   a cadet branch of the family

4. (archaic, US, slang) A young man who makes a business of ruining girls to put them in brothels.
5. (New Zealand, historical) A young gentleman learning sheep farming at a station; also, any young man attached to a sheep station.
6. (Australia) A participant in a cadetship.

Derived terms

• air cadet
• cadet blue
• cadet branch
• cadetcy
• cadet gray
• cadet grey
• cadet house
• officer cadet
• space cadet

Related terms

• cadette

Translations

a student at a military school who is training to be an officer

Albanian: kadet (sq) m, kadete f Arabic: تِمْلِيذ عَسْكَرِيّ m (timlīḏ ʕaskariyy), تِمْلِيذَة عَسْكَرِيَّة f (timlīḏa(t) ʕaskariyya) Armenian: please add this translation if you can Belarusian: курсант m (kursant), курсантка f (kursantka); кадзет m (kadzjet), кадэт m (kadet), кадзетка f (kadzjetka), кадэтка f (kadetka) Bulgarian: каде́т m (kadét), ю́нкер (bg) m (júnker) Chinese: Mandarin: please add this translation if you can Danish: kadet c Esperanto: kadeto sg Estonian: please add this translation if you can Finnish: kadetti (fi) French: cadet (fr) m Georgian: please add this translation if you can German: Kadett (de) m, Offiziersanwärter (de) m Hungarian: kadéta, kadét (hu) Icelandic: kadett m Irish: dalta m, dalta airm m Italian: cadetto (it) m, allievo ufficiale m Latvian: please add this translation if you can Lithuanian: kariūnas m Macedonian: питомец m (pitomec) Maori: hōia tauira, tama hōia Norwegian: Bokmål: kadett m Nynorsk: kadett m Persian: دانشجوی افسری (dânešju-ye afsari) Polish: kadet (pl) m Portuguese: cadete (pt) m Romanian: please add this translation if you can Russian: курса́нт (ru) m (kursánt), каде́т (ru) m (kadét), ю́нкер (ru) m (júnker) (historical) Scottish Gaelic: òglach m Slovak: please add this translation if you can Tagalog: kadete Turkish: please add this translation if you can Ukrainian: please add this translation if you can

younger son

Danish: yngre søn c French: puîné (fr) m German: jüngerer Bruder m, jüngerer Sohn m Italian: cadetto (it) m Polish: junior (pl) m Walloon: racoulot (wa) m (from many children)

References

1. “cadet”, in Dictionary.com Unabridged, Dictionary.com, LLC, 1995–present.
2. Douglas Harper (2001–2025) “cadet”, in Online Etymology Dictionary.

Further reading

• cadet on Wikipedia.Wikipedia

Anagrams

• acted, ectad

French

Etymology

Borrowed from Occitan capdet, from Late Latin capitellum (“small head”). Doublet of chapiteau, cadeau, and caudillo.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /ka.dɛ/

• Audio:

  (file)

Adjective

cadet (feminine cadette, masculine plural cadets, feminine plural cadettes)

1. (family) younger

   le fils cadet ― (please add an English translation of this usage example)

Noun

cadet m (plural cadets)

1. cadet, student officer
2. junior sportsperson, young player
3. a younger sibling

   Synonym: puîné

   Coordinate terms: aîné, benjamin

Derived terms

• cadet des soucis de

Descendants

• → Czech: kadet
• → English: cadet
  • → Cebuano: kadete (with Spanish cadete)
• → Dutch: kadee, kadet
• → German: Kadett
  • → Serbo-Croatian:
    • Cyrillic script: кадет
    • Latin script: kadet
  • → Vilamovian: kadet
• → Finnish: kadetti
• → Indonesian: kadet
• → Italian: cadetto
• → Polish: kadet
• → Portuguese: cadete
• → Russian: кадет (kadet)
  • → English: Kadet
• → Scots: caddie
  • → English: caddie, caddy, cad
• → Spanish: cadete
  • → Cebuano: kadete (with English cadet)

See also

• benjamin

Further reading

• “cadet”, in Trésor de la langue française informatisé [Digitized Treasury of the French Language], 2012.

Anagrams

• cédât

Latin

Verb

cadet

1. third-person singular future active indicative of cadō

Romanian

Etymology

Borrowed from French cadet.

Noun

cadet m (plural cadeți)

1. cadet

Declension

Declension of cadet

	singular			plural
	indefinite	definite		indefinite	definite
nominative-accusative	cadet	cadetul		cadeți	cadeții
genitive-dative	cadet	cadetului		cadeți	cadeților
vocative	cadetule			cadeților