world war

American  

noun

1. a war that involves most of the principal nations of the world.

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Etymology

Origin of world war

First recorded in 1910–15

Example Sentences

Eliot theorized in his 1925 poem “The Hollow Men,” a bleak assessment of life after the first world war.

From Barron's • Jun. 1, 2026

There’s nothing coincidental in the fact that military schools also rose up around then, and that they kept multiplying past the first world war and up to the second one.

From Los Angeles Times • May 22, 2026

Yet somehow, a world war posed less of a threat to Hearts than the disastrous tenure of a Russian-Lithuanian owner who nearly spent the club into oblivion in the 2010s.

From The Wall Street Journal • May 15, 2026

As he put it, “the war is now moving to a new stage: what we in the military call ‘positional’ warfare of static and attritional fighting, as in the first world war.

From Slate • Mar. 19, 2025

Around Britain and across the world, war raged.

From "A Deadly Wandering: A Mystery, a Landmark Investigation, and the Astonishing Science of Attention in the Digital Age" by Matt Richtel