battleship
Americannoun
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any of a class of warships that are the most heavily armored and are equipped with the most powerful armament.
noun
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a heavily armoured warship of the largest type having many large-calibre guns
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(formerly) a warship of sufficient size and armament to take her place in the line of battle; ship of the line
Other Word Forms
Noun Inflected Forms
Etymology
Origin of battleship
Compare meaning
How does battleship compare to similar and commonly confused words? Explore the most common comparisons:
Explanation
A battleship is a very large, seagoing military vessel. A battleship is prepared for war, being protected by heavy armor and equipped with guns. Today's modern military doesn't often use battleships — you're more likely to find a battleship in a harbor being explored by tourists. In the 19th and early 20th centuries, battleships were the most modern, powerful kind of boat on the water, and they were used during both World Wars by various countries' navies. The game Battleship, which shares a name with these warships, has been around in one form or another since the 1930s.
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
The Lockerbie bombing came five months after 290 people were killed when an Iranian commercial airliner was shot down by a US battleship.
From BBC ● Jul. 25, 2026
“It’s like a gigantic battleship with a lot of barnacles that have kind of attached themselves to the ship over the years,” Jeremy Stein, a Harvard economist and former Fed governor, said of the bureaucracy.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 17, 2026
The battleship was supplanted as king of the seas in the 1940s by the aircraft carrier.
From Barron's ● Jun. 5, 2026
Navy decommissioned its last battleship in 1992, after the military recognized that battleships had become sitting ducks, vulnerable to modern military munitions that could pick off the vessel from the sky.
From Salon ● May 8, 2026
Everything was battleship gray: the floor, walls, filing cabinets, a desk, and two chairs.
From "Endgame" by Frank Brady
However, Woodburn said there was still a role for the traditional battleships and submarines that BAE has been manufacturing for decades.
From BBC ● Jul. 23, 2026
FDR’s “arsenal of democracy” produced External link 10 battleships, 27 carriers, 211 submarines, and 310,000 aircraft to help win the war and establish Pax Americana.
From Barron's ● Jun. 5, 2026
Hegseth and Trump were frustrated by his lack of progress in implementing shipbuilding reforms to create Trump’s so-called “Golden Fleet,” led by the theoretical new “Trump-class” battleships.
From Salon ● May 1, 2026
In the first decade of the 20th century, two brilliant English civilians, Arthur Pollen and Harold Isherwood, invented the world’s first modern gunnery computer to aim the big guns of battleships.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Mar. 10, 2026
Nimitz demanded some of the battleships and destroyers originally given to Admiral Halsey for our Marines.
From "Code Talker: A Novel About the Navajo Marines of World War Two" by Joseph Bruchac
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
