Word.ws English Dictionary

phalanx

Syllables: pha·lanxUK/ˈfælæŋks//ˈfeɪˌlæŋks/

phalanx noun: an ancient Greek and Macedonian military unit that consisted of several ranks and files (lines) of soldiers in close array with joined shields and long spears.

phalanx: an ancient Greek and Macedonian military unit that consisted of several ranks and files (lines) of...
Image: Mariana Ruiz Villarreal ( LadyofHats ); retouches by Nyks, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Noun

phalanx (plural phalanxes or (literary, formal or academic) phalanges)

  1. (historical) An ancient Greek and Macedonian military unit that consisted of several ranks and files (lines) of soldiers in close array with joined shields and long spears.
  2. A large group of people, animals or things, compact or closely massed, or tightly knit and united in common purpose.
    • The monarch hath gone, but his rocky throne
      Still rests on its frowning base;
      Its motionless guards rise in phalanx lone,
      And nought save the winds through their helmets that moan,
      And none but those bosoms and hearts of stone
      Sigh o'er a fallen race.1827, Lydia Sigourney, Poems, The Chair of the Indian KIng, page 93
    • But there was no man to greet them in the market-place, and no woman's face appeared at the windows - only a bodiless voice went before them, calling: "Fallen is Imperial Kôr! - fallen! - fallen! fallen!" On, right through the city, marched those gleaming phalanxes, and the rattle of their bony...1886 October – 1887 January, H[enry] Rider Haggard, She: A History of Adventure, London: Longmans, Green, and Co., published 1887, →OCLC
  3. (historical) A Fourierite utopian community; a phalanstery.
    • [Charles Fourier] calculated that if precisely 1,620 men, women and children were collected in a 6,000-acre phalanx, they would — all by merrily following their individual passions — end up satisfying all the phalanx’s essential needs.2009 April 16, Jon Mooallem, “The End Is Near! (Yay!)”, in The New York Times, →ISSN
  4. One of the bones of the finger or toe.
    Synonyms:
    phalange, phalangeal
  5. A bundle of stamens, in diadelphous and polyadelphous flowers.

Proper noun capitalized: Phalanx

Phalanx

  1. The brand name of a radar-controlled rapid fire 20mm Gatling-type machine gun, the Phalanx CIWS (pronounced see-wiz), deployed on U.S. Navy ships as a last line of defense against antiship cruise missiles.

phalanx meaning in Tamil, Marathi, Telugu and Kannada

phalanx in Tamil

விரல் எலும்பு, விரலெலும்பு, பூவிழைக்கொத்து, ஒன்றுபட்ட குழு

phalanx in Marathi

ancient Greek military unit
फॅलँक्स phĕlĕṅksa

phalanx in Telugu

a phalanx, array, military evolution, the arrangement of troops in various positions
వ్యూహము vyūhamu

phalanx in Kannada

ಸೇನಾವ್ಯೂಹ, ಪದಾತಿತಂಡ, ಸಂಘಟಿತ ದಳ, ಈಡುತಂಡ
More languagesFewer languages
phalanx in Arabic
سُلَامَى sulāmā, سُلَامِيَّة sulāmiyya
phalanx in Malay
falanks
phalanx in Vietnamese
phalanx

Examples of phalanx in a sentence

  • Broad phalanx of cars across the bridge moving slowly through the streaming snow.1963, J P Donleavy, A Singular Man, published 1963 (USA), page 331:
  • There, the Paisleyites were being held back by another phalanx of soldiers and policemen.2007 May 6, Sean O'Hagan, “The day I thought would never come: This week, Ian Paisley and Martin McGuinness will astonish those who...

All 18 example sentences with phalanx

Synonyms of phalanx

Forms of phalanx

pluralphalanxes
plural formal literaryphalanges
pluralphalanges
plural proscribed (archaic)phalanxes

Plural of phalanx: phalanxes or phalanges

Origin of phalanx

Borrowed from Latin phalanx or Ancient Greek φάλαγξ (phálanx, “battle order; array”). Doublet of phalange, planch, plancha, planche, and plank.

Words formed from phalanx

Questions about phalanx

What does phalanx mean?
Phalanx means an ancient Greek and Macedonian military unit that consisted of several ranks and files (lines) of soldiers in close array with joined shields and long spears.
What is phalanx in Tamil?
Phalanx in Tamil is விரல் எலும்பு, விரலெலும்பு, பூவிழைக்கொத்து. See Phalanx meaning in Tamil.
How do you use phalanx in a sentence?
Broad phalanx of cars across the bridge moving slowly through the streaming snow.
What part of speech is phalanx?
Phalanx can be a noun or a proper noun.
How do you pronounce phalanx?
Phalanx is pronounced /ˈfælæŋks/ (UK).
What is the plural of phalanx?
The plural of phalanx is phalanxes.

Words near phalanx in the dictionary

  1. phalansteries
  2. phalansterism
  3. phalansterist
  4. phalansterists
  5. phalanstery
  6. phalanx
  7. phalanxes
  8. phalarica
  9. phalaricas
  10. phalaris
  11. phalarope

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: phalanx (page history and authors); Phalanx (page history and authors); phalanx (Tamil Wiktionary) (page history and authors); వ్యూహము (Telugu) (page history and authors); phalanx (Kannada Wiktionary) (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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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: en-au-phalanx.ogg, en-us-phalanx.ogg.

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