battleground
Americannoun
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the area where a battle is fought in a war; battlefield.
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a subject of discourse or area of activity characterized by much conflict.
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Nouns
Explanation
A battleground is a piece of land on which a war or battle is fought. You can visit many of the battlegrounds of the US Civil War. The literal meaning of battleground is just what it sounds like: the ground on which a battle has been waged. You can also use the word for the site of a figurative battle, like an election or a vote on a controversial issue. "Battleground states" are those in which the vote between two parties could swing either way, since neither holds a firm majority.
Vocabulary lists containing battleground
25 Words from "Baseball and Black History"
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"The Vietnam Wars" by Tod Olson
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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:
Big Tech companies increasingly have to justify their heavy artificial-intelligence spending to investors, and Microsoft’s stock has proven a major battleground for this trend.
From MarketWatch ● Jul. 28, 2026
Let the body remember that it is more than a battleground.
From Salon ● Jul. 20, 2026
"Mistrust is the real battleground," WHO chief, Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, wrote on social media, external in June.
From BBC ● Jul. 9, 2026
Years before social media became a political battleground, Fincher was focused on something more basic — the fear that everyone else had been invited to a party you couldn’t get into.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jun. 29, 2026
Eventually, Tennessee emerged as the most likely battleground.
From "Votes for Women!" by Winifred Conkling
That shift is turning “instant retail,” or quick commerce, into one of the most important battlegrounds in Chinese technology.
From Barron's ● May 23, 2026
Years before the U.S. military set off for battlegrounds in Cuba and the Philippines, rebels in both places had begun to fight for independence from the decrepit Spanish empire.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Nov. 5, 2025
People visiting the Gettysburg battlegrounds or historic district often report seeing spirits still dressed in uniform wandering about town.
From MarketWatch ● Oct. 27, 2025
Hurricane Helene tore through two key electoral battlegrounds last week, Georgia and North Carolina.
From BBC ● Oct. 5, 2024
Kennedy and his crew had been patrolling passages in the Solomon Islands of the South Pacific, one of many World War II battlegrounds between the United States and Japan.
From "Fallout: Spies, Superbombs, and the Ultimate Cold War Showdown" by Steve Sheinkin
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.
