Armada

How to spell armada

6 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce armada

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does armada mean?

1. nounA large fleet of warships, or by extension any large group of vehicles or vessels moving together.

Armada in a sentence

• The museum exhibit traced how a single armada once threatened the entire coast.

• A whole armada of fishing boats set out from the harbour before dawn.

Where does armada come from?

Language of origin: Spanish

This word came into English from Spanish armada, which means an armed fleet, that is, a force of warships ready for battle. The Spanish noun grew out of the Latin armata, the feminine past participle of armare meaning to arm or to equip with weapons, which itself rests on arma, the Latin word for weapons or tools of war. English borrowed it in the late 1500s, and its fame was sealed in 1588 when Philip II of Spain sent the great fleet known as the Spanish Armada against England. The same arma root sits inside everyday relatives such as army, armour and armament, which is a useful clue that the word turns on the idea of arming. Because the term arrived straight from Spanish rather than through French, it keeps the plain Spanish ending -ada with a single d, which is the small spelling point most writers need to fix in memory.

How the word is built

• arm- (from Latin arma: weapons)
• -ada (Spanish feminine past-participle/noun suffix: a thing armed)