Nearby Words

Wars

[wawr] Origin

war

1[wawr] noun, verb, warred, war·ring, adjective
noun
1.
a conflict carried on by force of arms, as between nations or between parties within a nation; warfare, as by land, sea, or air.
2.
a state or period of armed hostility or active military operations: The two nations were at war with each other.
3.
a contest carried on by force of arms, as in a series of battles or campaigns: the War of 1812.
4.
active hostility or contention; conflict; contest: a war of words.
5.
aggressive business conflict, as through severe price cutting in the same industry or any other means of undermining competitors: a fare war among airlines; a trade war between nations.
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6.
a struggle: a war for men's minds; a war against poverty.
7.
armed fighting, as a science, profession, activity, or art; methods or principles of waging armed conflict: War is the soldier's business.
8.
Cards.
a.
a game for two or more persons, played with a 52-card pack evenly divided between the players, in which each player turns up one card at a time with the higher card taking the lower, and in which, when both turned up cards match, each player lays one card face down and turns up another, the player with the higher card of the second turn taking all the cards laid down.
b.
an occasion in this game when both turned up cards match.
9.
Archaic. a battle.
COLLAPSE
verb (used without object)
10.
to make or carry on war; fight: to war with a neighboring nation.
11.
to carry on active hostility or contention: Throughout her life she warred with sin and corruption.
12.
to be in conflict or in a state of strong opposition: The temptation warred with his conscience.

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Wars is always a great word to know.
So is quincunx. Does it mean:
an arrangement of five objects, as trees, in a square or rectangle, one at each corner and one in the middle.
a printed punctuation mark (‽), available only in some typefaces, designed to combine the question mark (?) and the exclamation point (!), indicating a mixture of query and interjection, as after a rhetorical question.
adjective
13.
of, belonging to, used in, or due to war: war preparations; war hysteria.

Origin:
before 1150; (noun) Middle English, late Old English werre < Old North French < Germanic; cognate with Old High German werra strife; (v.) Middle English, late Old English werrien (transitive) to make war upon, derivative of the noun; compare Old French guerrer, Old North French werreier; akin to war2
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Based on the Random House Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2012.
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Etymonline
Word Origin & History

war
late O.E. (c.1050), wyrre, werre, from O.N.Fr. werre "war" (Fr. guerre), from Frank. *werra, from P.Gmc. *werso (cf. O.S. werran, O.H.G. werran, Ger. verwirren "to confuse, perplex"). Cognates suggest the original sense was "to bring into confusion." There was no common Gmc. word for "war" at the dawn
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of historical times. O.E. had many poetic words for "war" (guð, heaðo, hild, wig, all common in personal names), but the usual one to translate L. bellum was gewin "struggle, strife" (related to win). Sp., Port., It. guerra are from the same source; Romanic peoples turned to Gmc. for a word to avoid L. bellum because its form tended to merge with bello- "beautiful." The verb meaning "to make war on" is recorded from mid-12c. First record of war time is late 14c. Warpath (1775) is from N.Amer. Ind., as are war-whoop (1761), war-paint (1826), war-path (1775), and war-dance (1757). War crime first attested 1906. War chest is attested from 1901; now usually figurative. War games translates Ger. Kriegspiel (see kriegspiel).
COLLAPSE
Online Etymology Dictionary, © 2010 Douglas Harper
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