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gunpowder empire

gunpowder empire noun: any of the Ottoman, Safavid and Mughal empires, which all had considerable military success using then-innovative firearms, especially cannon and small arms.

Noun

gunpowder empire (plural gunpowder empires)

  1. (historical) Any of the Ottoman, Safavid and Mughal empires, which all had considerable military success using then-innovative firearms, especially cannon and small arms.

Forms of gunpowder empire

pluralgunpowder empires

Origin of gunpowder empire

Coined by Marshall G. S. Hodgson and William H. McNeill at the University of Chicago. Hodgson used the phrase as a title in The Venture of Islam (1974).

Questions about gunpowder empire

What does gunpowder empire mean?
Gunpowder empire means any of the Ottoman, Safavid and Mughal empires, which all had considerable military success using then-innovative firearms, especially cannon and small arms.
What part of speech is gunpowder empire?
Gunpowder empire is a noun.
What is the plural of gunpowder empire?
The plural of gunpowder empire is gunpowder empires.

Words near gunpowder empire in the dictionary

  1. gunports
  2. gunpost
  3. gunposts
  4. gunpowder
  5. gunpowder chicken
  6. gunpowder empire
  7. gunpowder empires
  8. Gunpowder Plot
  9. gunpowder tea
  10. gunpowder teas
  11. Gunpowder Treason

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: gunpowder empire (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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Cite this entry: “gunpowder empire.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/gunpowder_empire. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.