The Collaborative International Dictionary
Auxiliary \Aux*il"ia*ry\, n.; pl. Auxiliaries.
A helper; an assistant; a confederate in some action or enterprise.
(Mil.) pl. Foreign troops in the service of a nation at war; (rarely in sing.), a member of the allied or subsidiary force.
(Gram.) A verb which helps to form the voices, modes, and tenses of other verbs; -- called, also, an auxiliary verb; as, have, be, may, can, do, must, shall, and will, in English; [^e]tre and avoir, in French; avere and essere, in Italian; estar and haber, in Spanish.
(Math.) A quantity introduced for the purpose of simplifying or facilitating some operation, as in equations or trigonometrical formul[ae].
--Math. Dict.
Wiktionary
n. (plural of auxiliary English)
Wikipedia
An auxiliary force is an organized group supplementing but not directly incorporated in a regular military or police entity. It may comprise either civilian volunteers undertaking support functions or additional personnel directly performing military or police duties, usually on a part-time basis.
Historically the designation "auxiliary" has also been given to foreign or allied troops in the service of a nation at war. In the context of colonial armies locally recruited irregulars were often described as auxiliaries.
Usage examples of "auxiliaries".
Claudius gave to the knights who entered into the service, first the command of a cohort of auxiliaries, later that of a squadron, and at length, for the first time, the tribunate.
By this institution, each legion, to whom a certain proportion of auxiliaries was allotted, contained within itself every species of lighter troops, and of missile weapons.
Those who fix a regular proportion of as many foot, and twice as many horse, confound the auxiliaries of the emperors with the Italian allies of the republic.
We may compute, however, that the legion, which was itself a body of six thousand eight hundred and thirty-one Romans, might, with its attendant auxiliaries, amount to about twelve thousand five hundred men.
Each of them was at the head of three legions, ^15 with a numerous train of auxiliaries.
When we recollect the complete armor of the Roman soldiers, their discipline, exercises, evolutions, fortified camps, and military engines, it appears a just matter of surprise, how the naked and unassisted valor of the barbarians could dare to encounter, in the field, the strength of the legions, and the various troops of the auxiliaries, which seconded their operations.
The introduction of barbarian auxiliaries into those armies, was a measure attended with very obvious dangers, as it might gradually instruct the Germans in the arts of war and of policy.
It was, perhaps, in the character of auxiliaries that the latter introduced themselves into Spain.
The Gothic nation engaged to supply the armies of Rome with a body of two thousand auxiliaries, consisting entirely of cavalry, and stipulated in return an undisturbed retreat, with a regular market as far as the Danube, provided by the emperor's care, but at their own expense.
A few days afterwards, the emperor himself marched to the relief of Italy, at the head of a chosen body of auxiliaries, (among whom were the hostages and cavalry of the Vandals,) and of all the Praetorian guards who had served in the wars on the Danube.
The chastisement of those cities, and of their auxiliaries the savages of the South, is said to have alarmed the court of Persia, ^32 and the Great King sued in vain for the friendship of Probus.
From the port of Boulogne he sailed over to Britain, persuaded the legion, and the auxiliaries which guarded that island, to embrace his party, and boldly assuming, with the Imperial purple, the title of Augustus defied the justice and the arms of his injured sovereign.
In the room of the unwarlike troops of Asia, which had most probably served in the first expedition, a second army was drawn from the veterans and new levies of the Illyrian frontier, and a considerable body of Gothic auxiliaries were taken into the Imperial pay.
The most daring of the Scythians, of the Goths, and of the Germans, who delighted in war, and who found it more profitable to defend than to ravage the provinces, were enrolled, not only in the auxiliaries of their respective nations, but in the legions themselves, and among the most distinguished of the Palatine troops.
A just proportion of guards, of legions, and of auxiliaries, was allotted for their respective dignity and defence.