Word.ws English Dictionary

line ahead

line ahead noun: a type of warship formation with the ships proceeding one after another and the trailing ships following behind the lead ship on the same path.

line ahead: a type of warship formation with the ships proceeding one after another and the trailing ships...
Image: Rocco Pier Luigi, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Noun

line ahead (usually uncountable, plural lines ahead)

  1. (usually) A type of warship formation with the ships proceeding one after another and the trailing ships following behind the lead ship on the same path.
    • Unfortunately, the squadron was, in fact, quite a bit north by northeast of where they thought they actually were. The radiobeacon readings, as it turned out, had been correct. At about five o'clock in the afternoon, they'd adopted a line ahead formation, and, so, when the flagship made its turn to...2019 November 20, Drachinifel, 8:10 from the start, in Honda Point Disaster - Taking a Wrong Turn at Albuquerque, archived from the original on 14 Dec 2022
    • At about 0400 Nishimura's heavy ships joined up again with the Mogami group, and at about 0100 his force assumed its line formation for the approach to Leyte Gulf. In the lead were two destroyers. Four kilometers behind them were the two battleships and the cruiser Mogami in line ahead, with a...2024, Walter S. Zapotoczny, “The Battle of Surigao Strait: The Last Crossing of the T”, in Military History Online, archived from the original on 23 May 2024

Examples of line ahead in a sentence

  • At about five o'clock in the afternoon, they'd adopted a line ahead formation, and, so, when the flagship made its turn to port at nine o'clock, the rest of the ships followed in an orderly queue.2019 November 20, Drachinifel, 8:10 from the start, in Honda Point Disaster - Taking a Wrong Turn at Albuquerque, archived from the...
  • Four kilometers behind them were the two battleships and the cruiser Mogami in line ahead, with a destroyer on each flank.2024, Walter S. Zapotoczny, “The Battle of Surigao Strait: The Last Crossing of the T”, in Military History Online, archived from the...

Antonyms of line ahead

Forms of line ahead

plurallines ahead

Questions about line ahead

What does line ahead mean?
Line ahead means a type of warship formation with the ships proceeding one after another and the trailing ships following behind the lead ship on the same path.
How do you use line ahead in a sentence?
At about five o'clock in the afternoon, they'd adopted a line ahead formation, and, so, when the flagship made its turn to port at nine o'clock, the rest of the ships followed in an orderly queue.
What part of speech is line ahead?
Line ahead is a noun.
What is the plural of line ahead?
The plural of line ahead is lines ahead.

Words near line ahead in the dictionary

  1. lindyhops
  2. lindying
  3. lindys
  4. line
  5. line abreast
  6. line ahead
  7. line and length
  8. line art
  9. line bracelet
  10. line bracelets
  11. line brawl

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: line ahead (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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