Word.ws English Dictionary

rearguards

rearguards is the plural of rearguard.

Meaning of rearguard

Noun

rearguard (plural rearguards)

  1. (attributive, often) The rearmost part of a force, especially a detachment of troops that protect the rear of a retreating force.
    Antonyms:
    vanguard
  2. (attributive, often) The defence, collectively the defenders.
    • Mancini's side only showed enough ambition when it was too late and by then battle lines were drawn as James Collins and former City captain Richard Dunne fought a magnificent rearguard action at the heart of Villa's defence.2011 January 22, Phil McNulty, “Aston Villa 1 - 0 Man City”, in BBC Sport, archived from the original on 09 Aug 2022

Questions about rearguards

What is rearguards the plural of?
Rearguards is the plural of rearguard.

Words near rearguards in the dictionary

  1. reareth
  2. rearfoot
  3. rearguard
  4. rearguard action
  5. rearguard actions
  6. rearguards
  7. reargue
  8. reargued
  9. reargues
  10. rearguing
  11. reargument

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: rearguards (page history and authors); rearguard (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:

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