Word.ws English Dictionary

soft ordnance

soft ordnance noun: napalm or cluster bombs (for use against soft targets), as opposed to high explosives (for hardened targets).

Noun

soft ordnance (uncountable)

  1. (US, euphemistic) Napalm or cluster bombs (for use against soft targets), as opposed to high explosives (for hardened targets).
    • Some of the planes were loaded with "soft" ordnance—cluster bombs or napalm—others with "hard" ordnance such as high explosives. The planes were scrambled according to what the troops on the ground called for. If enemy soldiers were in the open, soft ordnance was on the menu; […]2000 December 31, Dale Andradé, America's Last Vietnam Battle: Halting Hanoi's 1972 Easter Offensive, University Press of Kansas, →ISBN, page 364

Questions about soft ordnance

What does soft ordnance mean?
Soft ordnance means napalm or cluster bombs (for use against soft targets), as opposed to high explosives (for hardened targets).
What part of speech is soft ordnance?
Soft ordnance is a noun.

Words near soft ordnance in the dictionary

  1. soft noses
  2. soft on
  3. soft ons
  4. soft opening
  5. soft openings
  6. soft ordnance
  7. soft palate
  8. soft palates
  9. soft paraffin
  10. soft paste
  11. soft paywall

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: soft ordnance (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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