nuke
Americannoun
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a nuclear or thermonuclear weapon.
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a nuclear power plant or nuclear reactor.
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nuclear energy.
to convert from coal to nuke.
adjective
verb (used with object)
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to attack, defeat, or destroy with or as if with nuclear weapons.
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Slang. to cook or bake in a microwave oven.
verb
noun
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a nuclear bomb
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a military strike with nuclear weapons
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nuclear power
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a nuclear power plant
Other Word Forms
Inflected Forms
Nouns
Participles
Conjugated Forms
Present
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nukesimple
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nukessimple
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have nukedperfect
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has nukedperfect
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am nukingprogressive
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are nukingprogressive
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is nukingprogressive
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have been nukingperfect progressive
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has been nukingperfect progressive
Past
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nukedsimple
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had nukedperfect
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was nukingprogressive
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were nukingprogressive
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had been nukingperfect progressive
Future
Etymology
Origin of nuke
First recorded in 1945–50; by shortening and respelling
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:
Anything short of that is merely kicking the nuke down the road.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Apr. 22, 2026
Stopping the nuke would give them more time to gather intelligence, but we learn there’s only a 61% chance of intercepting it.
From Los Angeles Times ● Oct. 9, 2025
Doggone it: Space is trying to nuke Russia!
From Slate ● Feb. 17, 2024
“The implicit message is not just: ‘We could nuke Los Angeles.’
From New York Times ● Feb. 4, 2024
Time to nuke up some chicken for the kids.
From "The Hot Zone" by Richard Preston
I just interviewed John Mecklin, editor of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists and we talked about existential risks, including nukes.
From Salon ● Jun. 22, 2026
“There’s I believe a growing appreciation that AIs are the new nukes, you have to have them.”
From Barron's ● Jun. 5, 2026
Brandishing nukes had nothing to do with it.
From Slate ● Oct. 30, 2025
Artificial intelligence, nukes, everything out of control, a cultural establishment that hates you.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 23, 2025
“The clans have been lobbing nukes at that sphere for the past two weeks, and they haven’t even scratched it. How are you going to get it to ‘drop on its own’?”
From "Ready Player One: A Novel" by Ernest Cline
This command to wipe out the files as fast as possible nuked “Toy Story 2” in the time it takes to play “You’ve Got a Friend in Me.”
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jun. 20, 2026
"I thought we got nuked or something," Mr Rogers told the local newspaper.
From BBC ● Oct. 3, 2025
“It’s really ironic that this piece probably got more attention than anything we normally published,” Lopez added, “even after they nuked the website.”
From Seattle Times ● Jun. 4, 2024
“The extent to which America nuked itself is not completely appreciated still, to this day, by most Americans, especially younger Americans,” he said.
From New York Times ● Jul. 20, 2023
His father nuked the fish sticks and used marinara.
From "Clayton Byrd Goes Underground" by Rita Williams-Garcia
“But I would not subscribe to the idea of nuking the Fed.”
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jun. 2, 2026
His flawed hyperloop plan, for example, or nuking the Martian poles to create an atmosphere, or basically anything he’s promised about Twitter.
From Scientific American ● May 15, 2023
Players can freely control Zack in 3-D space, swinging his giant sword at a monster and dodging its attacks in between nuking it with magic spells.
From New York Times ● Dec. 6, 2022
Scrambling an egg is — apart from boiling water or nuking a burrito — perhaps the easiest thing a cook can do.
From Washington Post ● Jul. 30, 2021
I was still fuzzy on why nuking grapes could cause a plasma ball.
From "Sir Fig Newton and the Science of Persistence" by Sonja Thomas
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.
