Word.ws English Dictionary

escalatio

escalatio noun: chiefly in the phrase "practicing escalatio": unpopular and seemingly pointless military escalation.

Noun

escalatio (plural not attested)

  1. (humorous, no plural) chiefly in the phrase "practicing escalatio": unpopular and seemingly pointless military escalation
    • "What with President Johnson practicing escalatio on the Vietnamese […] it has been a nervous year."1965, Tom Lehrer, “Send the Marines”, in That Was The Year That Was Live!

Questions about escalatio

What does escalatio mean?
Escalatio means chiefly in the phrase "practicing escalatio": unpopular and seemingly pointless military escalation.
What part of speech is escalatio?
Escalatio is a noun.

Words near escalatio in the dictionary

  1. escalate
  2. escalated
  3. escalates
  4. escalating
  5. escalatingly
  6. escalatio
  7. escalation
  8. escalation plan
  9. escalation plans
  10. escalations
  11. escalator

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: escalatio (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.

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