(click/touch triangles for details)
Definition
a level of a hierarchySee a comprehensive dictionary for less common senses of echelon that relate to military formations.
- The team has broken into the top echelon of the NBA.
- a low-echelon State Department officer
- The commander in the field is always right and the rear echelon is wrong, unless proved otherwise.Colin Powell
- Salaries of middle-echelon executives rose an average of 2%.
- That hurdle cleared, my case had to be reviewed by a board and then go through further administrative review by the upper echelon.Chris Kyle -- American Sniper
- Substitute mount obtained from rear echelon encountered on western flank at 0725.Mark Helprin -- A Soldier of the Great War
- I want you to attack en echelon, to take Cemetery Hill in reverse.Michael Shaara -- The Killer Angels
- We needed to increase Party at least into "K's"—say 40,000—with lowest echelons picked for fighting spirit rather than talents we had sought earlier.Robert A. Heinlein -- The Moon is a Harsh Mistress
- He distinguished himself at Austerlitz in that admirable march in echelons effected under the enemy's fire.Victor Hugo -- Les Miserables
- Up in the twelve-acre there were six men mowing in echelon.John Wyndham -- The Chrysalids
- You could let your hair grow, he said, and you didn't have to polish your boots or snap off salutes or put up with the usual rear-echelon nonsense.Tim O'Brien -- The Things They Carried
- He said that the group he represents hopes to sell memberships to high echelon executives in American and foreign companies.Stephen King -- The Shining
- He rolls the window down and a top-echelon Mafia guardsman nails him with the retinal scanner.Neal Stephenson -- Snow Crash
- If that floor panel is ever broken, the faceless messenger had told her, it means the upper echelon has been breached.Dan Brown -- The Da Vinci Code
- He saw philosophy as the highest echelon of the entire hierarchy of knowledge.Robert M. Pirsig -- Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
- Line-astern, Echelon, Arrow-head, Over-cloud: These learn Eternity.T. H. White -- The Once and Future King
- There's always been conspiratorial conjecture that a select few within this highest echelon of Masonry are made privy to some great mystical secret.Dan Brown -- The Lost Symbol
- But they're low echelon and you know Washington.Pat Frank -- Alas, Babylon
- On the first day of each month a new code name was chosen for his data, a name made known only to the highest echelon of CIA officers and analysts.Tom Clancy -- The Hunt for Red October
- He was an upper echelon Mason and certainly had ties to the Illuminati.Dan Brown -- Angels & Demons