Word.ws English Dictionary

in the wars

in the wars adjective: injured or damaged; with the appearance of having been treated roughly.

Adjective

in the wars

  1. (informal) Injured or damaged; with the appearance of having been treated roughly.
    • McArdle was at his post as usual. "Well," he cried, expectantly, "what may it run to? I'm thinking, young man, you have been in the wars. Don't tell me that he assaulted you."1912, Arthur Conan Doyle, The Lost World […], London; New York, N.Y.: Hodder and Stoughton, →OCLC

Questions about in the wars

What does in the wars mean?
In the wars means injured or damaged; with the appearance of having been treated roughly.
What part of speech is in the wars?
In the wars is an adjective.

Words near in the wars in the dictionary

  1. in the twinkling of a bedstaff
  2. in the twinkling of an eye
  3. in the valley of the blind, the one-eyed man is king
  4. in the vein of
  5. in the wake of
  6. in the wars
  7. in the way
  8. in the way of
  9. in the weeds
  10. in the wild
  11. in the wind

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: in the wars (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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