Word.ws English Dictionary

thermobaric

thermobaric adjective: describing various weapons that use atmospheric oxygen to produce a blast wave of a significantly longer duration than those produced by condensed explosives.

Adjective

thermobaric (not comparable)

  1. Describing various weapons that use atmospheric oxygen to produce a blast wave of a significantly longer duration than those produced by condensed explosives.
    • Fears have risen over the use of thermobaric weapons by Russia after the Ukrainian ambassador to the US said a vacuum bomb – another term for the weapon – had been used during the invasion.2022 March 1, Virginia Harrison, “What are thermobaric weapons and how do they work?”, in The Guardian, archived from the original on 01 Mar 2022
    • As he spoke, soldiers scrawled messages of retribution on the wings of a dozen drones, each packed with thermobaric explosives.2026 June 10, Marc Santora, “A Twist in Ukraine’s Drone Campaign Is ‘Really Hurting the Russians’”, in The New York Times, →ISSN

Noun

thermobaric (plural thermobarics)

  1. A thermobaric weapon.

Forms of thermobaric

pluralthermobarics

Origin of thermobaric

From thermo- + baric, derived from the Ancient Greek words for “heat” and “pressure”: θερμοβαρικός (thermobarikós), from θερμός (thermós, “hot”) + βάρος (báros, “weight, pressure”) + -ικός (-ikós, “-ic”).

Words formed from thermobaric

Phrases with thermobaric

Questions about thermobaric

What does thermobaric mean?
Thermobaric means describing various weapons that use atmospheric oxygen to produce a blast wave of a significantly longer duration than those produced by condensed explosives.
What part of speech is thermobaric?
Thermobaric can be an adjective or a noun.

Words near thermobaric in the dictionary

  1. thermoanæsthesia
  2. thermobalance
  3. thermobalances
  4. thermoballing
  5. thermoballistic
  6. thermobaric
  7. thermobaric weapon
  8. thermobaric weapons
  9. thermobarics
  10. thermobarograph
  11. thermobarographs

Source and license

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