Subaltern

Definitions

1. A subordinate.
2. A commissioned officer having a rank below that of captain; a lieutenant or second lieutenant.
   British
3. A subaltern proposition; a proposition implied by a universal proposition.
4. A member of a group that is socially, politically and geographically outside of the hegemonic power structure of the colony and of the colonial homeland.

Equivalents

Examples

“She was an extraordinarily beautiful girl, Margaret Devereux ; and made all the men frantic by running away with a penniless young fellow ; a mere nobody sir a subaltern in a foot regiment, or something of that kind.”

“As a subaltern of 24, Neave was captured in the defence of Calais in May 1940.”

“Young refers sardonically to the existence of reams of postcolonial "theory", and promises to give⟳ us "postcolonialism from below, which is what and where it should rightly be, given that it elaborates a politics of ‘the subaltern’, that is, subordinated classes and peoples".”

“In Ghosh's novel, a canonical western scientist is pitted against a counterscientific group of native folk-medicine practitioners led by Mangala, a subaltern in every conceivable meaning of the term.”

CEFR level