Wartime

How to spell wartime

7 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce wartime

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does wartime mean?

1. nounThe period during which a country is engaged in war.

Wartime in a sentence

• In wartime many factories switched to producing weapons and uniforms.

• Wartime rationing meant families had to make do with very little sugar and butter.

Where does wartime come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This is a transparent compound of two very old native English words, 'war' and 'time'. The 'war' element comes through Old North French 'werre', meaning confusion or strife, which itself goes back to a Germanic root 'werra' for discord; Old English did not use this exact word for armed conflict, so it arrived after the Norman Conquest. The 'time' element is purely native, from Old English 'tima', meaning a stretch or period, related to the idea of dividing duration into portions. Put together, the compound simply names the period during which a war is being fought, in contrast to peacetime. The word is recorded from the late medieval period onward and became especially common in the twentieth century with the two world wars, when 'wartime rationing' and 'wartime economy' entered everyday speech.

How the word is built

• war (armed conflict)
• time (period)