Waterloo
Americannoun
-
a village in central Belgium, south of Brussels: Napoleon decisively defeated here on June 18, 1815.
-
a decisive or crushing defeat.
The candidate met her Waterloo in the national elections.
-
a city in E Iowa.
-
a city in SE Ontario, in S Canada.
noun
-
a small town in central Belgium, in Walloon Brabant province south of Brussels: battle (1815) fought nearby in which British and Prussian forces under the Duke of Wellington and Blücher routed the French under Napoleon. Pop: 29 003 (2004 est)
-
a total or crushing defeat (esp in meet one's Waterloo )
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.
Fans of the Kansas Jayhawks and Arizona State Sun Devils gathered at a pre-game party in Waterloo on Friday.
From BBC ● Sep. 20, 2026
Anthropologists from the Faculty of Arts at the University of Waterloo led the research, using DNA recovered from skeletal remains and comparing it with samples provided by living descendants.
From Science Daily ● Sep. 10, 2026
There are 65 Canadian colleges listed, he says, including McGill University, the University of Toronto, the University of Waterloo and the University of British Columbia.
From MarketWatch ● Aug. 31, 2026
Organisers in Belgium said they had cancelled this weekend's reenactment of Napoleon's defeat at the Battle of Waterloo because of the heatwave.
From Barron's ● Jun. 27, 2026
J. B. Stryker’s was a square of wasteland behind the railway tracks running out of Waterloo Station.
From "Stormbreaker" by Anthony Horowitz
![]()
Random Word
Spin the wheel and learn a new word!
Get a wordDefinitions 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.