Word.ws English Dictionary

rules of engagement

rules of engagement is the plural of rule of engagement.

Meaning of rule of engagement

Noun

rule of engagement (plural rules of engagement)

  1. (in plural) An internal rule among a military, police, etc. force defining the circumstances in which and manner with which to use force.
    • The military, which acknowledged that the killings violated its rules of engagement, announced the deaths on Friday, hours after saying it had recovered the bodies of three other Israeli hostages in Gaza.2023 December 16, Aaron Boxerman, Ben Hubbard, Thomas Fuller, “Israel Says 3 Hostages Bore White Flag Before Being Killed by Troops”, in The New York Times, →ISSN
  2. (figuratively, transferred sense) An implied set of rules for when to undertake a certain approach.

Questions about rules of engagement

What is rules of engagement the plural of?
Rules of engagement is the plural of rule of engagement.

Words near rules of engagement in the dictionary

  1. rules lawyered
  2. rules lawyering
  3. rules lawyers
  4. rules nisi
  5. rules of decision
  6. rules of engagement
  7. rules of order
  8. rules of the game
  9. rules of the road
  10. rules of thumb
  11. rules off

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: rules of engagement (page history and authors); rule of engagement (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: “rules of engagement.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/rules_of_engagement. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.