nuke
UK/njuːk/US/n(j)uk/
nuke noun: a nuclear weapon. Also the alternative spelling of nuc.
Noun
nuke (plural nukes)
- A nuclear weapon.
- "Mini-nukes" are "among the active unresolved nuclear issues in NATO at the moment," according to a Senate Foreign Relations Committee staff report. […] Mini-nukes, the report said, are the "new generation of tactical nuclear weapons which combine low and variable yield possibilities with enhanced...1974 January, Lloyd Norman, “The Reluctant Dragon: NATO’s Fears and the Need for New Nuclear Weapons”, in L. James Binder, editor, Army, volume 24, number 1, Washington, D.C.: Association of the...
- The world has witnessed the first confrontation between the ‘nukes’ and the ‘non-nukes’ [i.e., countries possessing and not possessing nuclear weapons]. Although only a political one, this confrontation at the Review Conference of the Parties to the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), which took place...[1975 September, William Epstein, “Failure at the NPT Review Conference”, in Samuel H. Day, Jr., editor, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists: A Magazine of Science and Public Affairs, volume XXXI...
- Something that destroys or negates, especially on a catastrophic scale.
- A nuclear power station.
- Confronted with the threat of several nukes on the island, we soon realized that the Long Island Sound is being used as a massive cooling basin for nuclear reactors.1979, Anna Gyorgy et al., “Atomic Power, Nuclear Plants”, in No Nukes: Everyone’s Guide to Nuclear Power (Black Rose Books; no. I.49), Montreal, Que.: Black Rose Books, →ISBN, page 406
- Nukes Don't Pollute2002, Home Power - Issues 86-91, page 121
- A vessel such as a ship or submarine running on nuclear power.
- A nuke [nuclear submarine] can't survive with one flooded compartment. Any compartment that floods is going to kill you. Okay? Now, that's an acceptable risk because the nuclear hull is made of better steel. If a surface ship hits a nuclear submarine, the surface ship is going to sink, which we've...2006, Dan Gillcrist, “Apples and Oranges”, in Power Shift: The Transition to Nuclear Power in the U.S. Submarine Force as Told by Those Who Did It, Lincoln, Neb.: iUniverse, →ISBN, page 145
- A person (such as a sailor in a navy or a scientist) who works with nuclear weapons or nuclear power.
- But nowhere in our military services is there a more highly trained, more qualified group of officers than the Navy's nuclear power officers – Navy nukes. The responsibilities the Navy's 4,300 nukes have to assume – procuring, testing, operating, and maintaining our nuclear-powered fleet – require...1991 summer, Grady Wells, “Getting Under Way with Navy Nukes”, in Tyrone D. Taborn, editor, US Black Engineer, volume 15, number 3, Baltimore, Md.: Career Communications Group, →ISSN, →OCLC, page 29
- A cautionary flag placed on a release to label it as "bad" for some reason or another (e.g., being a dupe of a previous release or containing malware).
- A nuke based on non existent rules or made up reasons can be undone – this is called and^([sic]) un-nuke.2009 June 12, TEAM FILEnetworks, “Scene NukeWars : Funniest nuke reasons ever”, in FILEnetworks Blog, archived from the original on 23 Mar 2021
- A microwave oven.
- Just put it in the nuke for two minutes and it will be ready to eat.
- Three, my brothers that were taken elsewhere shall also be fed, in like manner, not from your nuke garbage but from your best food.1986, Christine Brooke-Rose, Xorandor, page 113
- A spell, item or ability that does a large amount of damage over a short period of time.
Verb
nuke (third-person singular simple present nukes, present participle nuking, simple past and past participle nuked)
- To use a nuclear weapon on (a target).
- If a nuclear war ever breaks out, military facilities are likely to be nuked first.
- It's Christmas at ground zero / Now the missiles are on their way / What a crazy fluke / We're gonna get nuked / On this jolly holiday1986, "Weird Al" Yankovic, “Christmas at Ground Zero”, in Polka Party!
- To destroy or erase completely.
- He had his posts nuked from the Google archives.
- The find is all the more remarkable, [George] Koch said, because the trees are in a tract added to the park belatedly, during President Jimmy Carter's administration. "They aren't all that far from an old clear-cut," he said. "Basically, they were almost nuked. The fact that they weren't is...2006 September 7, Glen Martin, “Eureka! New tallest living Thing discovered / THE CHAMPION: At 378.1 feet, Hyperion in Redwood National Park on North Coast towers 8 feet above Stratosphere Giant”, in...
- Synonyms:
- annihilate, devastate, obliterate, destroy, aerosolize, atomize, benothing, bewreck, blot out, blotto
- To carry out a denial-of-service attack against (an IRC user).
- The command and control servers used by the Mydoom variant, responsible for the recent denial of service attacks against Korean and US government websites, receive instructions from a master server located in the UK. [...] Apparently, the decision of whoever was responsible to damage the infected...2009 July 14, Lucian Constantin, “Master Control Server for Mydoom DDoS Botnet Tracked to UK: Security Experts Stress that North Korea’s Involvement in the Attacks is Unlikely”, in Softpedia News...
- To maliciously destroy an online community or chat server (especially on Discord) by mass-deleting channels, roles, and messages, or by mass-banning members, often using an automated script or bot.
- The Chaos Gang managed to get administrator permissions and nuke the entire server in seconds.
- To expose to some form of radiation.
- To cook in a microwave oven.
- I’ll nuke some pizza for dinner.
- If you've picked up a secondhand one, you should invest $4.00 for a microwave leak tester. The one I have has a little smiley face and a little frowning face. If the smiley face lights up when you pass it in front of the turned-on microwave, then you can nuke with impunity.1992, Lora Brody, “Welcome to Your Kitchen”, in The Kitchen Survival Guide: A Hand-holding Kitchen Primer with 130 Recipes to Get You Started, New York, N.Y.: William Morrow and Company, →ISBN, page...
- To overanalyze or despair unduly over something.
Also used as
nuke is also the alternative spelling of nuc.
nuke is also the alternative form of nucha.
nuke is also the alternative form of nook.
Examples of nuke in a sentence
- The world has witnessed the first confrontation between the ‘nukes’ and the ‘non-nukes’ [i.e., countries possessing and not possessing nuclear weapons].[1975 September, William Epstein, “Failure at the NPT Review Conference”, in Samuel H. Day, Jr., editor, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists...
- I can buy nukes on the black market for $40 million each.2001, Skip Woods, Swordfish, spoken by Gabriel Shear (John Travolta):
- He calculates that nukes might be needed to power energy-intensive “large scale co2 sequestration techniques” as well.2010, Andrew Nikiforuk, Tar Sands: Dirty Oil and the Future of a Continent, page 155:
- We've analyzed employee manifests at all nukes, LNG, and refineries in the United States for Middle Eastern profile matches.2010, Ben Coes, Power Down:
Synonyms of nuke
30 more synonymsFewer synonyms
Forms of nuke
| Noun | |
|---|---|
| plural | nukes |
| Verb | |
| third-person singular present | nukes |
| present participle | nuking |
| past participle | nuked |
| past | nuked |
Origin of nuke
Clipping of nuclear weapon. The verb is derived from the noun.
Clipping of nuc(leus).
See nucha.
Words formed from nuke
Phrases with nuke
Words that rhyme with nuke
Questions about nuke
- What does nuke mean?
- Nuke means a nuclear weapon.
- How do you use nuke in a sentence?
- The world has witnessed the first confrontation between the ‘nukes’ and the ‘non-nukes’ [i.e., countries possessing and not possessing nuclear weapons].
- What part of speech is nuke?
- Nuke can be a noun or a verb.
- How do you pronounce nuke?
- Nuke is pronounced /njuːk/ (UK).
- What is the plural of nuke?
- The plural of nuke is nukes.
Words near nuke in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: nuke (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:
Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: En-au-nuke.ogg.
Cite this entry: “nuke.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/nuke. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.