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''martinet'' ▫ᴱᴺ｜Definition｜1st｜20250719002227-00-⌔
martinet - Wiktionary, the free dictionary
English
Noun
martinet (plural martinets)
- (military) A strict disciplinarian.
- ✤ Captain Edward Carlisle, soldier as he was, martinet as he was, felt a curious sensation of helplessness seize upon him as he met her steady gaze, her alluring smile; he could not tell what this prisoner might do.1
- ✤ The same Aubrey deLint I’d dismissed for years as a 2-D martinet knelt gurneyside to squeeze my restrained hand and say ‘Just hang in there, Buckaroo,’ […]2
- ✤ In Seattle, he was replaced by a martinet from Annapolis, a man so vain and incompetent, so impatient with advice from experienced sailors and sure of his own right way, that, when the Hull set sail for the South Pacific, twenty men went AWOL, certain that to ship with this man was a death sentence.3
- (figuratively) Anyone who lays stress on a rigid adherence to the details of discipline, or to forms and fixed methods or rules.
- ✤ Before I met Mr. Bowen Cooke I had been given to understand that he was of a reserved nature, and on occasion could be a “bit of a martinet”; […].4
- (historical) A short whip with multiple lashes once used in France.
Noun
martinet (plural martinets)
- A martin; a swift.
Pronunciation
Etymology 1
After the example of 17th-century French army officer Jean Martinet.
Etymology 2
Borrowed from French martinet.
Printed 2026-06-28.
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Link to original Footnotes
1910, Emerson Hough, chapter I, in The Purchase Price: Or The Cause of Compromise, Indianapolis, Ind.: The Bobbs-Merrill Company, →OCLC: ↩
1996, David Foster Wallace, Infinite Jest […], Boston, Mass.; New York, N.Y.: Little, Brown and Company, →ISBN, page 15: ↩
2008, Greil Marcus, “Tied to History”, in The Threepenny Review : ↩
1942 July-August, Chas. S. Lake, “Some C.M.Es. I Have Known: II—C. J. Bowen Cooke”, in Railway Magazine, page 223: ↩
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