Combat

How to spell combat

6 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce combat

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does combat mean?

1. nounFighting between armed forces, or a struggle or contest against an opposing force.
2. verbTo take action to reduce, fight against, or stop something harmful.

Combat in a sentence

• noun

  The soldiers were trained for close combat in urban streets.

• verb

  The council launched a scheme to combat litter in the town centre.

• noun

  Hand-to-hand combat requires both strength and discipline.

• verb

  New policies aim to combat rising fuel costs for families.

Where does combat come from?

Language of origin: French

Combat reaches English from the French combattre, which was itself built on the Late Latin combattere, a compound of the prefix com- meaning 'with' or 'together' and battuere, a verb meaning 'to beat' or 'to strike'. The literal idea was of two parties striking at one another, that is, fighting it out together. French passed the word into English in the sixteenth century, first as a verb for engaging in a fight and soon after as a noun for the fight itself. The same battuere root lies behind a whole cluster of familiar English words, including 'battle', 'batter', 'battery' and even 'debate', so the single 'b' followed by a single 't' in the stem is consistent across the family. Because the word keeps the plain Latin spelling, the main trap is simply remembering that it ends in a single 't' and does not double up.

How the word is built

• com- (with, together)
• bat (from Latin battuere: to beat or strike)