Ranked or ranged below; subordinate; inferior; specifically (Mil.), ranking as a junior officer; being below the rank of captain; as, a subaltern officer.

A person holding a subordinate position; specifically, a commissioned military officer below the rank of captain.

Lieutenants or 2nd Lieutenants in both cavalry and infantry .

The term subaltern is used in postcolonial theory to refer to marginalized groups and the lower classes; this sense of the word was coined by Antonio Gramsci. In current philosophical and critical usage, the term specifically describes a person rendered without agency by her or his social status, a sense that owes its influence to Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak's 1988 essay "Can the Subaltern Speak?"

Asserting only a part of what is asserted in a related proposition.

A subaltern proposition.