Word.ws English Dictionary

catalytic war

catalytic war noun: a war initiated by one party and continued by others.

Noun

catalytic war (plural catalytic wars)

  1. A war initiated by one party and continued by others.
    • By this definition, World War I was a catalytic war, set off by Serbia and Austria, which also had some overtones of "reciprocal fear of surprise attack" and "self-fulfilling prophecy," because the side which mobilized first was likely to win.1966, Richard A. Falk, Saul H. Mendlovitz, The Strategy of World Order: Toward a theory of war prevention, page 30
    • Indeed a catalytic war seems much more likely to be touched off by a desperate or vengeful power than an ambitious one.1968, United States Air Force Academy. Department of Political Science, Mark E. Smith, American Defense Policy (page 91)

Forms of catalytic war

pluralcatalytic wars

Questions about catalytic war

What does catalytic war mean?
Catalytic war means a war initiated by one party and continued by others.
What part of speech is catalytic war?
Catalytic war is a noun.
What is the plural of catalytic war?
The plural of catalytic war is catalytic wars.

Words near catalytic war in the dictionary

  1. catalytic agent
  2. catalytic agents
  3. catalytic converter
  4. catalytic converters
  5. catalytic reformer
  6. catalytic war
  7. catalytic wars
  8. catalytical
  9. catalytically
  10. catalyzable
  11. catalyzation

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: catalytic war (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated:

Cite this entry: “catalytic war.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/catalytic_war. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.