Strategist
/ˈstrætɪdʒɪst/noun
Someone who plans campaigns or long-range policy.
The Greek roots
Literally: “army leader”
The story of the word
In classical Athens a στρατηγός was not a temperament but an elected post: ten of them a year, and unlike most Athenian offices the job was filled by vote rather than lottery because competence mattered. Pericles held it for fifteen years running and governed the city from it. The abstract noun strategy reached English through French military writing only in the eighteenth century, and strategist followed in the nineteenth, by which time it had escaped the army for the boardroom.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → French → English
- First recorded
- 19th century
The same roots elsewhere
Other languages reached for exactly the same Greek pieces.
Same family
In a sentence
The campaign's chief strategist wanted three states and nothing else.
As a tactician he was superb; as a strategist he never saw past the next quarter.