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 battleship was supplanted as king of the seas in the 1940s by the aircraft carrier.
From Barron's ● Jun. 5, 2026
Navy officials have said the new battleship would be armed with unproven next-generation weapons including lasers and rail guns, which are weapons that use electricity to fire a projectile instead of gunpowder.
From The Wall Street Journal ● May 12, 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
Trump said at a news conference announcing the battleship that the construction of the first of the vessels, the USS Defiant, would begin soon, with the first ships operational in two-and-a-half years.
From BBC ● Apr. 3, 2026
When the Japanese Propaganda Corps lands in the small Filipino village of Santiago, Bauang, there are a few million leaflets onboard their battleship.
From "At Last She Stood" by Erin Entrada Kelly
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
The new ones are “100 times more powerful” than the legendary battleships of World War II, which he went on to name—the Missouri, the Iowa, the Alabama.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jan. 22, 2026
He said that starting with his first term, he had been asking, “Why aren’t we doing battleships like we used to?”
From Los Angeles Times ● Jan. 1, 2026
Hitler’s aggressive actions made war seemed almost inevitable, and battleships and submarines started patrolling the oceans and coastlines.
From "The Woman All Spies Fear" by Amy Butler Greenfield
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.
