total war
total war noun: warfare where all of a country's available resources, military as well as civilian, are employed.
Noun
total war (countable and uncountable, plural total wars)
- Warfare where all of a country's available resources, military as well as civilian, are employed.
- In the course of its crisis the young French Republic discovered or invented total war: the total mobilization of a nation's resources through conscription, rationing and a rigidly controlled war economy, and virtual abolition, at home or abroad, of the distinction between soldiers and civilians.1962, Eric Hobsbawm, The Age of Revolution. 1789-1848, page 67
total war meaning in Kannada, Arabic, Indonesian and Persian
total war in Kannada
- ಸಾರ್ವತ್ರಿಕ ಯುದ್ಧ
total war in Arabic
- warfare where all of a country's resources are employed
- الحَرْب الشَّامِلَة al-ḥarb aš-šāmila
total war in Indonesian
- warfare where all of a country's resources are employed
- perang total
total war in Persian
- warfare where all of a country's resources are employed
- جنگ تمامعیار jang tamâm ayar
More languagesFewer languages
- total war in Thai
- สงครามเบ็ดเสร็จ sǒng-kraam-bèt-sèt
- total war in Vietnamese
- chiến tranh toàn diện
Forms of total war
| plural | total wars |
|---|
Origin of total war
Calque of German totaler Krieg, coined by Erich Ludendorff.
Questions about total war
- What does total war mean?
- Total war means warfare where all of a country's available resources, military as well as civilian, are employed.
- What is total war in Kannada?
- Total war in Kannada is ಸಾರ್ವತ್ರಿಕ ಯುದ್ಧ. See Total war meaning in Kannada.
- What part of speech is total war?
- Total war is a noun.
- What is the plural of total war?
- The plural of total war is total wars.
Words near total war in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: total war (page history and authors); total war (Kannada Wiktionary) (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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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-total war.wav.
Cite this entry: “total war.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/total_war. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.