war
see also: War, WAR
Etymology
War
Proper noun
WAR
Proper noun
This text is extracted from the Wiktionary and it is available under the CC BY-SA 3.0 license | Terms and conditions | Privacy policy 0.003
see also: War, WAR
Etymology
From Middle English werre, from Late Old English werre, wyrre ("armed conflict"), from fro-nor guerre (compare modern French guerre), from Medieval Latin werra, from Frankish *werru, from Proto-Indo-European *wers-.
Related to Old High German werra and German verwirren, but not to Wehr. Also related to osx werran, Dutch war, Western Frisian war,
Pronunciation Nounwar
- (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.
- 1854, Prince George, Duke of Cambridge, letter to Sarah Fairbrother from Crimean War:
- War is indeed a fearful thing and the more I see it the more dreadful it appears.
- 1864 Sept. 12, William Tecumseh Sherman, letter to the mayor of Atlanta, Georgia & al.:
- 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.
- 1879 June 19, William Tecumseh Sherman, speech to the Michigan Military Academy:
- 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!
- 1922, Henry Ford, Samuel Crowther, chapter [S%3Aen%3AMy+Life+and+Work%2F17 17], in My Life and Work, Garden City, New York: Garden City Publishing Company, Inc., →OCLC ↗:
- 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.
- 1935, Smedley Butler, War Is a Racket, page 1 & 7:
- 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.
- 1941, George Orwell, The Lion and the Unicorn, Pt. III:
- 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.
- 1944 June 27, Herbert Hoover, speech to the 1944 Republican National Convention:
- Older men declare war. But it is the youth that must fight and die.
- 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 ↗:
- 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
- 1997, Ron Perlman, Fallout:
- 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.
- 2013 July 20, "Old Soldiers? ↗", The Economist, Vol. 408, No. 8845:
- E. O. 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.
- (countable) A particular conflict of this kind.
- 1865, Herman Melville, The Surrender at Appomattox:
- All human tribes glad token see
In the close of the wars of Grant and Lee.
- 1999 Nov. 8, Bill Clinton, speech at Georgetown University:
- 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.
- a war of succession... a war of attrition... the Cold War... World War III...
- (countable, sometimes proscribed) Protracted armed conflict against irregular forces, particularly groups considered terrorists.
- 2001 Sept. 20, George W. Bush, speech before United States Congress, [https://web.archive.org/web/20090527194111/https://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/news/releases/2001/09/20010920-8.html White House Archives]:
- 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.
- 2021 Sept. 8, Seth G. Jones, quoted in Chris Moody, "Twenty Years after 9/11, Did US Win Its ‘War on Terror’? ↗" Al-Jazeera:
- "...These wars are not going away. This is at least a generational struggle."
- the Emu War... the Global War on Terrorism...
- 2001 Sept. 20, George W. Bush, speech before United States Congress, [https://web.archive.org/web/20090527194111/https://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/news/releases/2001/09/20010920-8.html White House Archives]:
- (countable, by extension) Any protracted conflict, particularly
- (chiefly US) Campaigns against various social problems.
- 1906, William James, [https://www.uky.edu/~eushe2/Pajares/moral.html The Moral Equivalent of War]:
- 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.
- the War on Poverty... the War on Drugs... the War on Christmas...
- (business) A protracted instance of fierce competition in trade.
- price wars... cola wars... format war...
- (crime) A prolonged conflict between two groups of organized criminals, usually over organizational or territorial control.
- (Internet) An argument between two or more people with opposing opinions on a topic or issue.
- (chiefly US) Campaigns against various social problems.
- (obsolete, uncountable) An assembly of weapons; instruments of war.
- 1709, Matthew Prior, “Henry and Emma. […]”, in The Poetical Works of Matthew Prior […], volume I, London: […] W[illiam] Strahan, […], published 1779, →OCLC ↗, page 245 ↗:
- The God of Love himſelf inhabits there,
With all his rage, and dread, and grief, and care,
His complement of ſtores, and total war...
- (obsolete) Armed forces.
- 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 ↗:
- On thir imbattelld ranks the Waves return,
And overwhelm thir Warr
- (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.
war (wars, present participle warring; simple past and past participle warred)
- (intransitive) To engage in conflict (may be followed by "with" to specify the foe).
- 1595, Samuel Daniel, The First Four Books of the Civil Wars:
- ...to war the Scot, and borders to defend...
- 1611, King James Bible, Book of Numbers, 31:7:
- 1882, George Bernard Shaw, chapter 14, in Cashel Byron's Profession:
- This vein of reflection, warring with his inner knowledge that he had been driven by fear and hatred . . ., produced an exhausting whirl in his thoughts.
- (transitive) To carry on, as a contest; to wage.
- French: entrer en guerre, faire la guerre
- German: Krieg führen, (obsolete) kriegen
- Italian: fare la guerra
- Portuguese: guerrear
- Russian: воева́ть
- Spanish: guerrear, hacer la guerra
War
Proper noun
- Preceded by the: designating a particularly notable war.
- (obsolete) World War I.
- (chiefly, Britain, informal) World War II.
- The personification of war, often depicted in armour and riding a red horse; the red rider.
- A city in West Virginia, USA.
WAR
Proper noun
- Init of w:White Aryan Resistance
- (computing, Java programming language) Initialism of Web application archive .
- (military, historical) Init of w:Winchester Automatic Rifle
- Init of w:Women Against Registry
war (uncountable)
- (computing) Initialism of write after read, a kind of data hazard.
- (sports) Acronym of wins above replacement
This text is extracted from the Wiktionary and it is available under the CC BY-SA 3.0 license | Terms and conditions | Privacy policy 0.003