in anger
Language: English
Part of speech: adv
Pronunciation: text: "fire in anger"
Senses: examples: text: The Napier of Magdala Battery never fired a shot in anger: it never engaged in combat.
text: These craft [flying boats] were never perfected, never flown in anger and destroyed at war's end.
ref: 2009 December 22, Gaetano V. Cavallaro, Futility Ending in Disaster: Diplomatic, Military, Aviation and Social Events in the First World War on the Austro-Italian Front, Xlibris Corporation, →ISBN, page 519:
text: Over the years, B52s have been deployed in anger by the US Air Force in two conflicts, Vietnam and the Gulf. Despite the outcome of the former, the B52 acquitted itself with success both as a tactical bomber and in the strategic role […]
ref: 2010 June 19, Ian Watson, The Royal Air Force at Home: The History of RAF Air Displays from 1920, Casemate Publishers, →ISBN:
text: And what actinic, mind-wrenching form could the countermeme take? How could human hands assemble something so devastatingly powerful and hold it steady; what human mind could wield it without exploding from the inside out? What would deploying that concept in anger do to human ideatic space? How far out from the solution is modern memetic science, a year, a century? What insane impossibility has Hughes just committed himself to?
ref: 2019 December 9, qntm, “Wild Light”, in There Is No Antimemetics Division, →ISBN, pages 191–192:
text: Sunday morning’s US raid on Iran’s nuclear facilities, involved more than 125 military aircraft and saw the first use in anger of the GBU-57 bunker buster, said to penetrate 60m underground before exploding.
ref: 2025 June 24, Paul Nuki, Afshin Madadi, “Iran ‘hiding thousands of centrifuges’ to build nuclear bomb”, in The Telegraph:
topics: government
military
politics
war
glosses: With the intent of causing damage or harm to an opponent; in combat, rather than in peacetime training.
examples: text: "Have you used it in anger yet?" The time is a dozen years ago, the place is Oxford, and my fellow postdoc has just scrutinized my new bike. He's admired the chrome, checked the gears, noted the Kryptonite lock. Now he wants to know if I've used it to serious purpose. Gleaming chrome is well and good, but will it run you through the woods? "Have you used it in anger yet?"
ref: 1998 July 29, Philip Wadler, “Functional Programming: An Angry Half-Dozen”, in Sophie Cluet, editor, Database Programming Languages: 6th International Workshop, DBPL-6, Estes Park, Colorado, USA, August 18-20, 1997, Springer Science & Business Media, →ISBN, page 25; republished as Rick Hull, editor, (Please provide a date or year):
text: On the bench was Lorenzo Amoruso, who had yet to kick a ball in anger for the first team as he had been injured since his arrival the previous summer. He only had to wait nineteen minutes before he made his Rangers bow, as he was pitched into the white-hot heat of the Parkhead cauldron[…]
ref: 2011 October 27, Alistair Aird, Ally McCoist - Rangers Legend, Kings Road Publishing, →ISBN:
text: At that point, Stoley gave up the cause and the Argonauts faded from history, still having yet to kick a ball in anger.
ref: 2012 July 9, Anton Rippon, Amazing & Extraordinary Facts - Football, David and Charles, →ISBN:
glosses: In a real situation, rather than only in theory or as part of practice or learning.