rank and file
Proposed by a contributor, not yet supported by evidence.
Meaning · English
Ordinary members of an organization, not leaders
Nghĩa · Tiếng Việt
thành viên bình thường của một tổ chức, không phải lãnh đạo
Machine-translated — suggest a fix
Literally: rows of soldiers
Where it’s used:
Used
Widespread English
Examples
The congress — taking place in an atmosphere of extreme vindictiveness among the SED rank and file following the corruption revelations — will determine the future of the Communist Party.
In keeping with the rank - and - file strength of the movement, however, pressure was applied most effectively at local level.
British National Corpus sentence via the MAGPIE corpus (CC BY 4.0, retrieved 2026-07-30)
Sources & notes
Listed on Wikipedia “Irreversible binomial” (CC BY-SA 4.0, retrieved 2026-07-29). Definition drafted by AI (@cf/meta/llama-3.3-70b-instruct-fp8-fast) and auto-approved by rule on 2026-07-30; pending editor spot-check.
Common questions
What does “rank and file” mean?
Ordinary members of an organization, not leaders Literally: rows of soldiers
Is “rank and file” formal or informal?
No register label has been reviewed yet — treat it as neutral and check the usage notes above.