echelon
e shuh lon
- n a body of troops arranged in a line
- n a diffraction grating consisting of a pile of plates of equal thickness arranged stepwise with a constant offset
- Nor has Gates offered any resistance to Obama's plan to install his own loyalists in the upper echelon of the Pentagon bureaucracy, which is now staffed largely by Rumsfeld .
- Three of Europe's top-echelon Communist newsmen last week were out of their jobs as a result of their protests against Soviet military reprisals in Hungary.
- Depending on how you define an upper-echelon official, the princelings number anywhere from 5,000 to 100,000.