Note 64 — Chapter I

We need not enter into the controversy whether the word was derived from columna or corona or from neither. For a century or more it was written indifferently colonel or coronel, to which last the modern English pronunciation is doubtless to be traced. Brantôme writes always couronnel; Milton in his famous sonnet gives the word the dignity of the three syllables. Some say that it was borrowed from the landsknechts, but this is a palpable error. (See a paper by Mr. Julian Corbett, American Hist. Review, Oct. 1896, "The Colonel and his Command").