Word.ws English Dictionary

testing ground

testing ground noun: a military site that is used for testing weapons.

Noun

testing ground (plural testing grounds)

  1. A military site that is used for testing weapons.
    • You know, brothers, that West Irian may possibly, possibly, I repeat possibly, also become a testing ground for either atomic weapons or other explosive devices.1960, United States. Foreign Broadcast Information Service, Daily Report: Foreign Radio Broadcasts - Issues 16-20, page 85
    • In 1862, upon orders of Bismarck who was preparing for war, a big military testing ground was established there and it was used in part as a camp for French prisoners of war already during the Franco-Prussian war.1984, Jadwiga Bezwińska, Danuta Czech, KL Auschwitz Seen by the SS, page 58
  2. A location set up for the testing of vehicles, machinery, agricultural techniques, etc. to ensure that they work as intended.
    • The testing ground shall be not less than 1 ha in area and the length worked not less than 100 m.1966, Joint FAO/ECE/ILO Committee on Forest Working Techniques and Training of Forest Workers, Methods of Testing Brush-cutting Machines and Machines for Forest-soil Working and Afforestation, page 4
    • And inside that testing ground you have guards and people who prevent the public from coming in to those grounds, isn't that true?1967, Howe V. General Motors Corporation, page 570
  3. (figuratively) A situation or thing that allows new ideas, methods, or hypotheses to be tried out.
    • Copper Harbor, where there are known copper veins, was used as a testing ground for the AMT method.1973, Sea Grant College Reprint - Volume 74, Issues 350-376, page 15
    • "Boston must become a testing ground for the ideals of freedom," King admonished the crowd .1985, “Boston On the Barricades”, in Newsweek, volume 106, page 70
  4. (figuratively) A situation or problem that allows people to test how good they are.
    • Autocratic control grows out of the fundamental imposition of a testing ground on all our young people; the institution that teaches the young also tests the young.1977, Edward P. Morgan, Inequality in Classroom Learning, page 59
    • Movie actors and singers often use the musical stage as a testing ground for their talent and popularity .2009, Magnum Photos, Korea: As Seen by Magnum Photographers, page 283
    Synonyms:
    proving ground

Examples of testing ground in a sentence

  • The most horrible part of the testing ground's history is probably what happened in 1953 to the small village of Karaul standing on a hill slope.1991, Current Politics and Economics of Russia, page 122:
  • Veterans of the Semipalatinsk nuclear testing ground recall their enthusiasm for their work in perfecting a hydrogen bomb to defend the Motherland1991, Daily Report: Soviet Union, page 59:
  • The Geinsheim testing ground, a free-field site equipped to handle bigger and heavier antennae, is located about 16 km west of Darmstadt in the Rhine valley between Leeheim and Geinsheim.1972, Telecommunication Journal - Volume 39, page 660:
  • Although the rare gases and especially Xe have, for several years now, been serving as a testing ground for experimental multiphoton ionization studies, relevant calculations have been very rare.1985, Donald C. Lorents, Walter Ernst Meyerhof, James R. Peterson, Electronic and Atomic Collisions, page 765:

Synonyms of testing ground

Forms of testing ground

pluraltesting grounds

Questions about testing ground

What does testing ground mean?
Testing ground means a military site that is used for testing weapons.
How do you use testing ground in a sentence?
The most horrible part of the testing ground's history is probably what happened in 1953 to the small village of Karaul standing on a hill slope.
What part of speech is testing ground?
Testing ground is a noun.
What is the plural of testing ground?
The plural of testing ground is testing grounds.

Words near testing ground in the dictionary

  1. testing 1-2-3
  2. testing clause
  3. testing clauses
  4. testing effect
  5. testing effects
  6. testing ground
  7. testing out
  8. testing someone's patience
  9. testing testing
  10. testing the water
  11. testing the waters

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: testing ground (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: “testing ground.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/testing_ground. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.