Word.ws English Dictionary

tripwires

tripwires is the plural of tripwire.

tripwires is the third-person singular simple present indicative of tripwire.

Meaning of tripwire

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.
    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

See all 3 meanings of tripwire

Questions about tripwires

What is tripwires the plural of?
Tripwires is the plural of tripwire.

Words near tripwires in the dictionary

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

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: tripwires (page history and authors); 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: “tripwires.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/tripwires. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.