Word.ws English Dictionary

on the warpath

on the warpath prepositional phrase: very angry or upset and eager for confrontation.

Prepositional phrase

  1. (idiomatic) Very angry or upset and eager for confrontation.
    • Last year a committee of the Federal Council of the Churches of Christ in America issued a report guardedly approving Birth Control. […] [M]any Presbyterians heartily disapproved. Last week the Presbyterian General Assembly met in Denver with Philadelphia's Rev. H. McAllister Griffiths and a corps...1932 June 6, “Religion: Churches v. Council”, in Time, archived from the original on 27 Oct 2010
    • Boating enthusiasts, walkers and others who enjoy relaxing by canals were on the warpath last night after British Waterways announced plans to cut 180 staff.2006 October 11, Colin Brown, “Fears grow for waterways as canal jobs are cut”, in The Independent
    Synonyms:
    enraged, furious

Examples of on the warpath in a sentence

  • McAllister Griffiths and a corps of Fundamentalists on the warpath.1932 June 6, “Religion: Churches v. Council”, in Time, archived from the original on 27 Oct 2010:
  • But BBC executives say they could never have predicted the latest programme to send Chinese officials on the warpath: the corporation's far-fetched spy drama Spooks.2010 November 11, Helen Pidd, Mark Sweney, Tania Branigan, “Taking Spooks seriously: Beijing on the warpath over BBC spy drama”, in The...

Synonyms of on the warpath

Questions about on the warpath

What does on the warpath mean?
On the warpath means very angry or upset and eager for confrontation.
How do you use on the warpath in a sentence?
McAllister Griffiths and a corps of Fundamentalists on the warpath.
What part of speech is on the warpath?
On the warpath is a prepositional phrase.

Words near on the warpath in the dictionary

  1. on the viretot
  2. on the wagon
  3. on the wallaby
  4. on the wallaby track
  5. on the wane
  6. on the warpath
  7. on the watch
  8. on the water cart
  9. on the water wagon
  10. on the way
  11. on the way out

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: on the warpath (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-on the warpath.ogg.

Cite this entry: “on the warpath.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/on_the_warpath. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.