Word.ws English Dictionary

tripwire

tripwire noun: a cord or wire arranged so that when snagged or pulled by an intruder, it will trigger a detector or trap or a device, such as a land mine.

Noun

tripwire (plural tripwires)

  1. A cord or wire arranged so that when snagged or pulled by an intruder, it will trigger a detector or trap or a device, such as a land mine.
    • Seeing the tripwire of a nearby bouncing Betty gave us cold chills, and we moved all the more slowly through the woods.
    • They watched the two ghost-hunters run own the corridor and go crashing over the trip-wire.1971, Richard Carpenter, Catweazle and the Magic Zodiac, Harmondsworth: Puffin Books, page 119
    Synonyms:
    trip cord, tripline
  2. (figuratively) Any means of detecting intruders or attackers.
    • The continued presence of U.S. troops as a tripwire force in Macedonia is an increasingly risky venture.1994, Diplomat, volume 5, page 67

Verb

tripwire (third-person singular simple present tripwires, present participle tripwiring, simple past and past participle tripwired)

  1. (transitive) To set a tripwire mechanism in (a location).

Synonyms of tripwire

Forms of tripwire

Noun
pluraltripwires
alternative formtrip wire
Verb
third-person singular presenttripwires
present participletripwiring
past participletripwired
pasttripwired

Origin of tripwire

From trip + wire.

Questions about tripwire

What does tripwire mean?
Tripwire means a cord or wire arranged so that when snagged or pulled by an intruder, it will trigger a detector or trap or a device, such as a land mine.
What part of speech is tripwire?
Tripwire can be a noun or a verb.
What is the plural of tripwire?
The plural of tripwire is tripwires.

Words near tripwire in the dictionary

  1. Tripuraneni
  2. Tripuranenis
  3. Tripuri
  4. Tripuris
  5. tripus
  6. tripwire
  7. tripwired
  8. tripwires
  9. tripwiring
  10. tripy
  11. tripyridyl

Source and license

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