I just had a cog slip in my brain and wrote an article for my notes about the Imperial Navy and its "pretty officers".
I mean, not that they don't *have* those, but still...
@cerebrate Honestly I’d sooner expect the Eldrae’s navies to have those than “petty” officers.
Translation artifact. (Inasmuch as there were more important places for me to use up my budget of exotic terms for readers to learn.)
Also, etymologically speaking, it's believed to have come straight from the French _petit_ without touching on the English "petty", meaning essentially "officer in charge of a little (specific) area" vis-a-vis "officer in charge of all that".
The corresponding distinction in Eldraeic is probably "executive officer" rather than "policy officer", but no-one except English civil servants would understand that without extensive footnotes.
@cerebrate yeah, but I’m saying that with their cultural view of pride and hierarchy they wouldn’t be called something so demeaning as “petty officers.”
I would have suggested “sergeant” but apparently that means “servant.”