commander in chief

1. 1.

   the officer who holds the supreme command

   “in the U.S. the president is the commander in chief”

   Synonymscommander-in-chiefgeneralissimo

   Broadercommanding officer

Questions about commander in chief

What does commander in chief mean?

commander in chief means "the officer who holds the supreme command".

What is another word for commander in chief?

Close synonyms include commander-in-chief, generalissimo. Each sense on this page lists its own synonyms, because a word with several meanings rarely has one substitute that works for all of them.

Is commander in chief a common word?

commander in chief is banded "Rare" — specialist or archaic — most readers will not have met it. The band comes from how often the word appears in a large corpus of everyday English, not from an editor's impression.