Word.ws English Dictionary

protected cruiser

protected cruiser noun: a type of cruiser (the warship) carrying moderately-heavy main guns (although considerably lighter than those of a battleship) in armored turrets or other enclosures and having the machinery and magazine spaces protected by an armored lower deck, but leaving the sides of the ship unarmored (relying on the ship's coal bunkers to absorb hits to the sides of the hull) to save weight and allow for a high speed and long range; common in the late 19th century, but rendered obsolescent by the armored cruiser around 1900 as technological advances reduced the weight penalty of a side-mounted armor belt and made warships lacking belt armor increasingly vulnerable to enemy gunfire.

protected cruiser: a type of cruiser (the warship) carrying moderately-heavy main guns (although considerably lighter...
Image: Emoscopes, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Noun

protected cruiser (plural protected cruisers)

  1. A type of cruiser (the warship) carrying moderately-heavy main guns (although considerably lighter than those of a battleship) in armored turrets or other enclosures and having the machinery and magazine spaces protected by an armored lower deck, but leaving the sides of the ship unarmored (relying on the ship's coal bunkers to absorb hits to the sides of the hull) to save weight and allow for a high speed and long range; common in the late 19th century, but rendered obsolescent by the armored cruiser around 1900 as technological advances reduced the weight penalty of a side-mounted armor belt and made warships lacking belt armor increasingly vulnerable to enemy gunfire.

Forms of protected cruiser

pluralprotected cruisers

Questions about protected cruiser

What does protected cruiser mean?
Protected cruiser means a type of cruiser (the warship) carrying moderately-heavy main guns (although considerably lighter than those of a battleship) in armored turrets or other enclosures and having the machinery and magazine spaces protected by an armored lower deck, but leaving the sides of the ship unarmored (relying on the ship's coal bunkers to absorb hits to the sides of the hull) to save weight and allow for a high speed and long range; common in the late 19th century, but rendered obsolescent by the armored cruiser around 1900 as technological advances reduced the weight penalty of a side-mounted armor belt and made warships lacking belt armor increasingly vulnerable to enemy gunfire.
What part of speech is protected cruiser?
Protected cruiser is a noun.
What is the plural of protected cruiser?
The plural of protected cruiser is protected cruisers.

Words near protected cruiser in the dictionary

  1. protectant
  2. protectants
  3. protected
  4. protected area
  5. protected areas
  6. protected cruiser
  7. protected cruisers
  8. protected democracies
  9. protected democracy
  10. protected membrane roof
  11. protected membrane roofs

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: protected cruiser (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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