strategy [E16th] In ancient Greek strategia meant the office or command of a general, generalship, and later a province governed by a strategos, a chief magistrate or general, formed from stratos ‘army’ and agein ‘to lead’. As the job of a commander-in-chief or general is to plan the larger movements or long-term objectives of a military campaign, strategy had acquired this meaning by the late 18th century. Stratagem [LME], from the same root, arrived in English via French stratagem and Latin strategma, but although it can simply mean a skilful military plan, it has had a sense of a trick or ploy since the mid 16th century. Tactics [E17th], with which strategy is often confused, comes in part from earlier tactical [L16th] and partly from modern Latin tactica formed from Greek taktike techne ‘art of arrangement (especially in war)’, which goes back ultimately to tassein ‘to arrange’. Tactics is thus the art or science of deploying military forces in battle or performing manoeuvres, working on a smaller and more immediate scale than strategy.