War

How to spell war

3 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce war

What does war mean?

1. nounA state of armed conflict between nations, states, or groups.
2. verbTo engage in or carry on armed conflict.

War in a sentence

• noun

  The museum exhibit documented life during the war.

• verb

  The two factions continued to war over control of the border region.

• noun

  Economists warned that a trade war would raise prices on both sides.

• verb

  Rival clans would war for generations over the disputed land.

Where does war come from?

Language of origin: French

War traces back to the Old North French word werre, a regional variant of the form that became guerre in standard French, which is exactly why so many Romance languages still call it guerra or guerre while English uses 'war'. That French word was itself borrowed from a Frankish Germanic source, the reconstructed root werra, whose original sense was something closer to 'confusion', 'discord', or 'quarrel' rather than organised fighting. English took the word in shortly after the Norman Conquest, around the middle of the 1100s, when French-speaking rulers brought much of their military vocabulary with them. Interestingly, the same Germanic root that gave us 'war' is also related to the word 'worse', sharing the underlying idea of things being thrown into disorder. The spelling stayed short and blunt, a single syllable that has barely changed in eight hundred years, which is part of why it is one of the easiest words in English to write.

How the word is built

• war (single root; from Old North French werre 'armed conflict, strife')

Words that sound like war

They sound the same but mean different things, so the meaning decides which spelling to write.

• wore: The past tense of 'wear': to have had clothing, jewellery, or an expression on the body at an earlier time.