Warfare

How to spell warfare

7 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce warfare

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does warfare mean?

1. nounThe activity of fighting a war, or a particular method or type of armed conflict.

Warfare in a sentence

• The documentary examined the brutal trench warfare of the First World War.

• Modern warfare increasingly relies on drones and cyber attacks.

Where does warfare come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

Warfare is a compound stitched together from two old native English elements. The first part, 'war', came into late Old English from an Old North French word 'werre', meaning a state of armed conflict; that in turn traces back to a Germanic root meaning 'to confuse' or 'to bring into disorder', which captures the chaos of fighting. The second part, 'fare', is genuinely Old English 'faru' or the verb 'faran', meaning 'to travel, to go, or to make one's way', and it survives today in words like 'farewell', 'thoroughfare', and 'wayfarer'. Put together in the early 1400s, 'warfare' literally meant the 'going' or 'waging' of war, the act of carrying on a military campaign. The spelling trap is purely in that second half, since the silent guidance of 'fare' (rhyming with 'care') is the same as in 'welfare', and the word is sometimes wrongly written with a doubled letter or as two words.

How the word is built

• war (armed conflict)
• fare (going, journey, course of action)