counterarm

counterarm verb: to arm oneself in order to match the level of weaponry held by an opponent.

Verb

counterarm (third-person singular simple present counterarms, present participle counterarming, simple past and past participle counterarmed)

To arm oneself in order to match the level of weaponry held by an opponent.
- After all, according to the letter of the 1979 NATO decision, the NATO council was supposed to examine first the results of the Soviet-U.S. talks and then to take a decision on whether to counterarm, as they call it in the West, or not to counterarm.1984, Daily Report: Soviet Union - Volume 84, Issues 10-21, page 202
- The lesson of the last four years is therefore that the zero option would not now be within our grasp if we had not taken the decision to counterarm and restore parity.1987, The Expanding Role of the European Community in International Security Issues, page 18

counterarm (plural counterarms)

A weapon that is acquired in order to counter one held by an opponent.
- The submarine is the dominating weapon today. Undersea boats spell a nameless, historical terror because no effective counterarm has been perfected.1917, Flying - Volume 5, page 136
- Of course, we want them in a forum, not a forum of threat and counterthreat, arm and counterarm, but in the forum of discussion, and I suggest we put it there.1976, United States. Congress. House. Committee on Foreign Affairs, Military Assistance Programs - Volumes 461-484, page 391
A weighted arm, or an arm that holds a weight, which acts as a counterbalance.
- Balancing this at the other end of the teeterboard was a counterarm.1939, The New Yorker - Volume 15, Part 1, page 21
- Grotesque arms and counterarms of the balance mechanism below the tunnel wrote their mathematical hieroglyphs on the big instrument panel.1986, Harold Mansfield, Vision: a saga of the sky, page 179
A galactic arm on the far side of a galaxy that is colliding with another galaxy.
- On the far side of the larger galaxy a counterarm sometimes sprouts out.1978, Simon Mitton, Exploring the Galaxies, →ISBN, page 103
- The deformations are triggered after the passage to perigalacticon: the two spiral arms generated are not symmetric and are distinguished by a bridge linking the two galaxies and a counterarm at the opposite side.2004, Francoise Combes, Patrick Boissé, Alain Mazure, Galaxies and Cosmology, →ISBN, page 187

If those years are devoted to an accelerated arms race, we might very well miss the big chance while still building ever- increasing piles of arms and counterarms.1962, Amitai Etzioni, The hard way to peace: a new strategy, page 89:
The very long straight tail of one is interpreted as a counterarm of one galaxy seen edge-on with the counterarm of the other galaxy seen closer to face-on as more obviously arched.2012, F.D. Kahn, Investigating the Universe, →ISBN:

Verb
third-person singular present	counterarms
present participle	counterarming
past participle	counterarmed
past	counterarmed
Noun
plural	counterarms

From counter- + arm.

What does counterarm mean?: Counterarm means to arm oneself in order to match the level of weaponry held by an opponent.
How do you use counterarm in a sentence?: If those years are devoted to an accelerated arms race, we might very well miss the big chance while still building ever- increasing piles of arms and counterarms.
What part of speech is counterarm?: Counterarm can be a verb or a noun.
What is the past tense of counterarm?: The past tense of counterarm is counterarmed.

Adapted from Wiktionary: counterarm (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: 2026-09-02

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