War

/wɔː/ · noun

Meaning

(uncountable) Organized, large-scale, armed conflict between countries or between national, ethnic, or other sizeable groups, usually but not always involving active engagement of military forces..

Definitions by Sense

1. (uncountable) Organized, large-scale, armed conflict between countries or between national, ethnic, or other sizeable groups, usually but not always involving active engagement of military forces.
2. (countable) A particular conflict of this kind.
3. (countable, sometimes proscribed) Protracted armed conflict against irregular forces, particularly groups considered terrorists.
4. (countable, by extension) Any protracted conflict, particularly
5. (obsolete, uncountable) An assembly of weapons; instruments of war.
6. (obsolete) Armed forces.
7. (uncountable, card games) Any of a family of card games where all cards are dealt at the beginning of play and players attempt to capture them all, typically involving no skill and only serving to kill time.
8. (intransitive) To engage in conflict (may be followed by "with" to specify the foe).

Example Sentences

holy war; just war; civil war

War is indeed a fearful thing and the more I see it the more dreadful it appears.

You cannot qualify war in harsher terms than I will. War is cruelty, and you cannot refine it; and those who brought war into our Country deserve all the curses and maledictions a people can pour out... You might as well appeal against the thunder-storm as against these terrible hardships of war.

I've been where you are now and I know just how you feel. It's entirely natural that there should beat in the breast of every one of you a hope and desire that some day you can use the skill you have acquired here. Suppress it! You don't know the horrible aspects of war. I've been through two wars and I know. I've seen cities and homes in ashes. I've seen thousands of men lying on the ground, their dead faces looking up at the skies. I tell you, war is hell!

Older men declare war. But it is the youth that must fight and die.

Edward Wilson, the inventor of the field of sociobiology, once wrote that "war is embedded in our very nature". This is a belief commonly held not just by sociobiologists but also by anthropologists and other students of human behaviour. They base it not only on the propensity of modern man to go to war with his neighbours (and, indeed, with people halfway around the world, given the chance) but also on observations of the way those who still live a pre-agricultural "hunter-gatherer" life behave... Whether modern, industrial man is less or more warlike than his hunter-gatherer ancestors is impossible to determine... One thing that is true, though, is that murder rates have fallen over the centuries... Modern society may not have done anything about war. But peace is a lot more peaceful.

Come on, let vs deale wisely with them, lest they multiply, and it come to passe that when there falleth out any warre, they ioyne also vnto our enemies, and fight against vs, and so get them vp out of the land.

And when yee shall heare of warres, and rumors of warres, be yee not troubled: For such things must needs be, but the end shall not be yet.

Synonyms for war

Antonyms for war

Related Words

Word Forms

• wars
• warre
• warr
• warring
• warred

Usage Notes

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