Ammo

How to spell ammo

4 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce ammo

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does ammo mean?

1. nounAn informal short form of ammunition: the bullets, shells, or rounds fired from a weapon.

Ammo in a sentence

• The soldiers ran low on ammo during the long siege.

• He kept his hunting ammo locked in a steel cabinet.

Where does ammo come from?

Language of origin: French

Ammo is a casual short form of ammunition, a word that reached English through French in the late 1500s. The French munition came from the Latin munitio, meaning a 'fortification' or 'defensive structure', built on the verb munire, 'to fortify or build a wall around'. In early French the phrase la munition (the supply for defence) was misheard and re-divided as l'amunition, which is how the extra opening 'a' attached itself to the word and gave us ammunition rather than munition. By the twentieth century soldiers and shooters had trimmed the long word down to the breezy two-syllable ammo, with the doubled 'm' carried over from the parent word. The same munire root also lies behind 'munitions' factories and the related idea of being 'immune', literally 'walled off' from harm.

How the word is built

• clipped short form of ammunition (la munition reanalysed as l'amunition; from Latin munire 'to fortify')