“Petty Officer” Refers to Subordinate Navy Rank, Not Personal Character

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hey, how you doing? This is Ryan. I’m in Camp Pendleton.

Oh, great. Just down the road. What can we help you with?

Well, I had a topic that I wanted to discuss. It was actually the rank of petty officer in the Navy.

Huh. Petty officer.

Yeah, and basically, I’ve been in the Marines for 11 years now, and we call all of our enlisted from the rank of E-4 to E-9 non-commissioned officers. And basically what that means is that you have leadership, but you just don’t have a commission.

In the Navy, they say petty officer. Now, I’ve served aboard three naval vessels wearing petty officers from the rank of first class all the way up to Massachusetts, petty officers. There’s nothing petty about them.

So I’ve always wondered why the Navy chose to call their enlisted with leadership petty.

Huh.

That’s a great question. Nothing petty about them. That’s great. There’s absolutely. I mean, have you ever seen these guys operate the way they run these ships, the way they get us Marines from the shore to the beach? It’s unbelievable the things that they do.

So I always wondered about that, maybe where that came from. Right, because it seems kind of oxymoronic. It doesn’t really apply to these men and their power and their position.

Interesting. It goes back to the French, which also has more than one meaning for the word that’s the source of our word petty. It’s P-E-T-I-T, which is pronounced in French something like petit, which to an English speaker comes out more or less as petty. And it doesn’t mean small. It means under or less than or inferior to. And not in fear as a pejorative, but it’s simply saying in a hierarchy or in a ranking, this person is below somebody else. That’s it.

The military is all about rank. A lot of the military words that we use for modes of defense, for titles of positions, for just a lot of different words in there are French origin, just like in our judicial system. For example, grand larceny versus petty theft.

Exactly right. Same idea. Grand comes with a French word for large or big, and petty comes with a French word for small.

Yeah, so petty just basically means subordinate to others that are higher in rank.

Exactly right. So, yeah. So it’s just simply about rank and nothing about their personal character.

Yeah, I definitely figured that. I figured it was something traditional and historic. I just had no idea where it would have come from.

Yeah, your instincts were good. They were spot on, Ryan.

Yeah, that’s a really good point. Well, I thank you for enlightening me on that. Maybe I’ll share it with them because I was asking those guys. You know, it’s funny. I’ll go to them. I’ll say, hey, so why do they call you Petty? They’ll say, you know what? I really don’t know why they call us Petty.

That’s great. So as a Marine, I’ll be able to tell the Navy why they got their name. That’s great. That’s fantastic. You’re going to make up some wild story, though, right?

Yeah, I probably won’t say it has anything to do with, you know, other languages from Europe. I’ll say, you know, maybe some Marines, you know, didn’t like the Navy. And he, you know, decided to call them Petty. He didn’t make it my name. You know, it wouldn’t be right if I did enough with him.

Yeah, a little bit. Exactly. It’s kind of your job.

Thanks for calling, Ryan. We really appreciate it. Thanks for your service.

Thank you for having me. Bye-bye.

Our pleasure. That’s kind of a workplace question. Maybe you have one, too. 877-929-9673. What do you call your boss or the people who work underneath you? You can send an email to words@waywordradio.org or find us on Facebook and Twitter.