world war

American  

noun

• world wars
  plural

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

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Other Word Forms

Noun Inflected Forms

• world wars
  plural

Etymology

Origin of world war

First recorded in 1910–15

Example Sentences

See Examples For:

world war

After the second world war, sugar remained rationed in Britain for several years.

From Science Daily ● Aug. 26, 2026

DST, which also helped conserve fuel during the first world war, was unpopular with farmers and was repealed after the war.

From BBC ● Jul. 14, 2026

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

I had read the dramatic poetry of Wilfred Owen, who had been killed in the first world war, and took to filling pages with my own romantic poetry about the nurse, war, and heroic deaths.

From "Bad Boy" by Walter Dean Myers