sergeant

   In modern times this professional title is used mainly to those holding the rank of sergeant in the army, air force, marine corps, or police force. The army rank is that of a non-commissioned officer, ranking immediately above a corporal. The air force rank is equivalent to this, though there are minor differences between British and American usage.

   In the British police force a sergeant holds the rank immediately below an inspector. His American equivalent ranks below a captain. Colleagues of both military and police sergeants are likely to address them as ‘Sarge’.

   In Joyce Cary’s short story Bush River, a young British officer uses ‘Sargy’, but this is unusual. A schoolmaster in P.G.Wodehouse’s story of public school life, Mike, addresses the school sergeant by his former military title, a practice which was at one time common.

   In earlier literature references occur to. e.g., the superior order of barristers who are now normally distinguished as serjeants. Mr Pickwick has much to do with Sergeant Buzfuz, who accuses him of systematic villainy in his relations with Mrs Bardell.

   Seventeenth-century references to sergeants are often to the officer whose duty was to enforce the judgement of a tribunal, or to arrest offenders and bring them before the court. There is the famous allusion by Hamlet to ‘this fell sergeant, death, is strict in his arrest’.

   Shakespeare also introduces a sergeant-at-arms into Henry the Eighth. This was a man, one of twenty-four specially appointed, of knightly rank, who attended on the king and arrested traitors and similar offenders. ‘Your office, sergeant: execute it,’ says Brandon (l:i). The sergeant then delivers his one and only speech: ‘Sir. My lord the Duke of Buckingham, and Earl of Hereford, Stafford and Northampton, I arrest thee of high treason, in the name of our most sovereign King.’ According to Holinshed’s Chronicles it was Sir Henry Marney who made the arrest in real life. Apart from its use on its own, ‘Sergeant’ is often used as a title preceding the family name of the person concerned. The pet form ‘Sarge’ is not used in this way.

   Novelists sometimes indicate sub-standard pronunciation of ‘sergeant’ with spellings such as ‘Sarn’t’. ‘Sargint’ occurs in Shipmaster, by Gwyn Griffin. In Tom Jones, by Henry Fielding, a nonce name is created by Tom when he addresses a military man as ‘Mr Sergeant’.