war
Language: English
Part of speech: noun
Pronunciation: ipa: /wɔː/
ipa: /wɔɹ/
note: Indic
ipa: /wɔ(r)/
note: father-bother merger
ipa: /wɑ(r)/
homophone: wore
homophone: wor stripped-by-parse_pron_post_template_fn
rhymes: -ɔː(ɹ)
ipa: /wɑɹ/
Forms: form: wars
form: warre
form: warr
Etymology: From Middle English werre, from Late Old English werre, wyrre (“armed conflict”), from Old Northern French werre (compare modern French guerre), from Medieval Latin werra, from Frankish *werru (“confusion; quarrel”), from Proto-Indo-European *wers- (“to mix up, confuse, beat, thresh”). Gradually displaced native Old English beadu, hild, ġewinn, orleġe, wīġ, and many others as the general term for "war" during the Middle English period.
Related to Old High German werra (“confusion, strife, quarrel”) and German verwirren (“to confuse”), but not to Wehr (“defense”). Also related to Old Saxon werran (“to confuse, perplex”), Dutch war (“confusion, disarray”), West Frisian war (“confusion”),
Old English wyrsa, wiersa (“worse”), Old Norse verri (“worse, orig. confounded, mixed up”), Italian guerra (“war”). There may be a connection with worse and wurst.
Senses: examples: text: holy war; just war; civil war
text: 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.
ref: 1611, The Holy Bible, […] (King James Version), London: […] Robert Barker, […], →OCLC, Exodus 1:10:
text: 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.
ref: 1611, The Holy Bible, […] (King James Version), London: […] Robert Barker, […], →OCLC, Mark 13:7:
text: War is indeed a fearful thing and the more I see it the more dreadful it appears.
ref: 1854, Prince George, letter to his wife from Crimea
text: 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.
ref: 1864 Sept. 12, William Tecumseh Sherman, letter to the mayor of Atlanta & al.
text: 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!
ref: 1879 June 19, William Tecumseh Sherman, speech to the Michigan Military Academy
text: Here Lee and Longstreet stood during most of the fighting [at Fredericksburg], and it is told that, on one of the Federal repulses from Marye's Hill, Lee put his hand upon Longstreet's arm and said, "It is well that war is so terrible, or we would grow too fond of it."
ref: 1907, Edward Porter Alexander, Military Memoirs of a Confederate, page 302:
text: Nobody can deny that war is a profitable business for those who like that kind of money. War is an orgy of money, just as it is an orgy of blood.
ref: 1922, Henry Ford, Samuel Crowther, chapter 17, in My Life and Work, Garden City, New York: Garden City Publishing Company, Inc., →OCLC:
text: War is a racket. It always has been. It is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious. It is the only one international in scope. It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives... Of course, it isn't put that crudely in war time. It is dressed into speeches about patriotism, love of country, and "we must all put our shoulders to the wheel," but the profits jump and leap and skyrocket—and are safely pocketed.
ref: 1935, Smedley Butler, War Is a Racket, page 1 & 7:
text: War is the greatest of all agents of change. It speeds up all processes, wipes out minor distinctions, brings realities to the surface. Above all, war brings it home to the individual that he is not altogether an individual.
ref: 1941, George Orwell, The Lion and the Unicorn, Pt. III:
text: Older men declare war. But it is the youth that must fight and die.
ref: 1944 June 27, Herbert Hoover, speech to the Republican National Convention
text: From where Winston stood it was just possible to read, picked out on its white face in elegant lettering, the three slogans of the Party:
WAR IS PEACE
FREEDOM IS SLAVERY
IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH
ref: 1949 June 8, George Orwell [pseudonym; Eric Arthur Blair], chapter 1, in Nineteen Eighty-Four: A Novel, London: Secker & Warburg, →OCLC; republished [Australia]: Project Gutenberg of Australia, August 2001, part 1, page 7:
text: War, huh, Good God, y'all!
What is it good for?
Absolutely nothing...
ref: 1969, “War”, in Norman Whitfield, Barrett Strong (lyrics), War & Peace, performed by Edwin Starr:
text: War. War never changes. The Romans waged war to gather slaves and wealth. Spain built an empire from its lust for gold and territory. Hitler shaped a battered Germany into an economic superpower. But war never changes.
ref: 1997, Ron Perlman, Fallout:
text: 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.
ref: 2013 July 20, "Old Soldiers?", The Economist, Vol. 408, No. 8845
text: China and the United States are closer than they’ve ever been to a war over Taiwan.
ref: 2025 September 15, Jennifer Kavanagh, “Here’s How Trump Can Prevent a War Over Taiwan”, in The New York Times, →ISSN, →OCLC, archived from the original on 15 Sep 2025, Opinion:
glosses: 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.
examples: text: All human tribes glad token see
In the close of the wars of Grant and Lee.
ref: 1865, Herman Melville, The Surrender at Appomattox:
text: A second challenge will be to implement, with our allies, a plan of stability in the Balkans, so that the region's bitter ethnic problems can no longer be exploited by dictators and Americans do not have to cross the Atlantic again to fight in another war.
ref: 1999 Nov. 8, Bill Clinton, speech at Georgetown University
text: a war of succession... a war of attrition... the Cold War... World War III...
glosses: A particular conflict of this kind.
examples: text: Our war on terror begins with al Qaeda, but it does not end there. It will not end until every terrorist group of global reach has been found, stopped and defeated.
ref: 2001 Sept. 20, George W. Bush, speech before Congress, White House Archives
text: ...These wars are not going away. This is at least a generational struggle.
ref: 2021 Sept. 8, Seth G. Jones, quoted in Chris Moody, "Twenty Years after 9/11, Did US Win Its ‘War on Terror’?" Al-Jazeera
text: the Great Emu War... the Global War on Terrorism...
glosses: Protracted armed conflict against irregular forces, particularly groups considered terrorists.
examples: text: the War on Poverty... the War on Drugs... the War on Christmas...
ref: 2025 October 2, William Davies, “A critique of pure stupidity: understanding Trump 2.0”, in The Guardian:
glosses: Any protracted conflict, particularly
examples: text: The war against war is going to be no holiday excursion or camping party... Ask all our millions, north and south, whether they would vote now (were such a thing possible) to have our war for the Union expunged from history... and probably hardly a handful of eccentrics would say yes. Those ancestors, those efforts, those memories and legends, ar the most ideal part of what we now own together, a sacred spiritual possession worth more than all the blood poured out. Yet ask those same people whether they would be willing, in cold blood, to start another civil war now to gain another similar possession, and not one man or woman would vote for the proposition.
ref: 1906, William James, The Moral Equivalent of War:
glosses: Any protracted conflict, particularly
A sustained campaign against a social problem, idea, set of values, etc.
examples: text: price wars... Cola Wars... format wars...
topics: business
glosses: Any protracted conflict, particularly
A protracted instance of fierce competition in trade.
examples: text: turf war... gang war... Castellammarese War...
glosses: Any protracted conflict, particularly
A prolonged conflict between two groups of organized criminals, usually over organizational or territorial control.
qualifier: crime
examples: text: flame war... edit war...
glosses: Any protracted conflict, particularly
An argument between two or more people with opposing opinions on a topic or issue.
examples: text: The God of Love himſelf inhabits there,
With all his rage, and dread, and grief, and care,
His complement of ſtores, and total war...
ref: 1709, Matthew Prior, “Henry and Emma. […]”, in The Poetical Works of Matthew Prior […], volume I, London: […] W[illiam] Strahan, […], published 1779, →OCLC, page 245:
glosses: An assembly of weapons; instruments of war.
examples: text: On thir imbattelld ranks the Waves return,
And overwhelm thir Warr
ref: 1667, John Milton, “Book X”, in Paradise Lost. […], London: […] [Samuel Simmons], and are to be sold by Peter Parker […]; [a]nd by Robert Boulter […]; [a]nd Matthias Walker, […], →OCLC; republished as Paradise Lost in Ten Books: […], London: Basil Montagu Pickering […], 1873, →OCLC:
glosses: Armed forces.
examples: text: We played crazy eights, war, fifty-two card pickup. Rudy flipped the whole deck across the table at me and the cards sailed to the floor, kings, queens, deuces.
ref: 2004, Karen Salyer McElmurray, Strange Birds in the Tree of Heaven:
topics: card-games
games
glosses: 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.
Hyponyms: civil war
cola war
cold war
Continuation War
conventional war
edit war
flame war
format war
gang war
gas war
holy war
hot war
Hundred Years' War
Korean War
Mexican-American War
Mexican War
nuclear war
nukewar
pissing war
price war
propaganda war
proxy war
race war
revert war
shadow war
Spanish-American War
succession war
thermonuclear war
Thirty Years' War
thumb war
total war
trade war
tribal war
turf war
undeclared war
Vietnam War
war of all against all
war of choice
war of ideas
war of religion
war of succession
War of the Roses
War on Christmas
War on Drugs
War on Poverty
war on terror
War on Women
Wars of the Three Kingdoms
water war
wheel war
world war
World War One
World War Three
World War Two
Derived terms: 14-18 war
abstinence of war
act of war
afterwar
after-war
airwar
air war
all is fair in love and war
all's fair in love and war
anti-war
articles of war
art of war
at war
bewarred
bus war
captain of sea and war
catalytic war
class war
color war
contraband of war
council of war
counterwar
culture war
currency war
cyberwar
declaration of war
declare war
dirty war
dogs of war
ecowar
European War
fog of war
forever war
future war
God of War
go to war
gunstock war club
hard war
honors of war
honours of war
how goes the war
hybrid war
independence war
infowar
inter-war
interwar
intestine war
iWar
law of war
laws of war
lightning war
loudness war
man of war
man-of-war bird
man-of-war
man-o-war
man-o'-war
man o' war
man-o'-war suit
miniwar
mommy war
mummy war
netwar
never fight a land war in Asia
never start a land war in Asia
nonwar
outwar
Pacific War
pea-knuckle war
people's war
Portuguese man-of-war
postcode war
post-war
preventive war
prewar
pre-war
prisoner-of-war camp
prisoner of war
P.O.W.
POW
P.W.
PW
progressive war
pro-war
prowar
secession war
ship of war
ship war
shooting war
sinews of war
sloop-of-war
spasm war
spoils of war
state of war
theater of war
theatre of war
there is no war in Ba Sing Se
this is war
this means war
thumb-a-war
tong war
transwar
tug of war
tug-of-war
uncivil war
war-
war artist
war baby
warbag
warband
war between the sexes
warbird
warblade
warblog
warblogger
warblogging
war bond
war bonnet
warbot
warbow
war bride
war by proxy
war cabinet
War Cabinet
war cake
war cemetery
war chalk
warchalk
warchest
war chest
war chief
war child
warclub
war club
war communism
warcore
war correspondent
warcraft
war crime
war criminal
war cry
war daddy
war dance
war-dial
wardialer
war-dialing
war dog
wardom
wardrive
war-drive
wardriving
war-driving
war drum
war economy
war effort
war elephant
war establishment
warfare
warfighter
warfighting
war film
war footing
warfreak
war fries
warfront
warful
war game
wargame
wargamer
wargaming
war garden
wargasm
war god
war golok
war grave
war groom
war hammer
war hawk
warhead
war-hero
war hero
war horn
war-horn
warhorse
war hound
warhungry
warish
war is hell
warism
war-king
warlady
war leader
warless
warlight
warlike
warling
warload
warlord
warly
war machine
warmaker
warman
warmaster
warmate
war memorial
warmonger
war-monger
warmouth
war movie
warnik
war of aggression
war of attrition
war of conquest
war of independence
war of liberation
war of nerves
war of secession
war of the currents
war of words
war orphan
war paint
war-paint
warpaint
war party
warpath
warplane
war porn
warpower
war profiteer
warproof
war propaganda
war-ravaged
warray
war reparations
war-ridden
warring
warrior
warrish
war room
war-room
war sand
Warshington
warship
war shirt
war siu gai
warsome
warspeak
war story
war su gai
war sui gai
warsuit
war time
war-time
wartime
war to end all war
war to end all wars
war torn
war-torn
war to the knife
war tourism
war tuba
war veteran
war wagon
warwagon
warwalking
warwards
war-weariness
war-weary
war weary
war whoop
war widow
warwood
war-work
war work
war worker
war-worker
warworn
war zone
weasel war dance
we have always been at war with Eastasia
world-war
Yom Kippur War
Related terms: battle