Word.ws English Dictionary

war baby

war baby noun: an officer owing his position to the need of the time rather than competence.

Noun

war baby (plural war babies)

  1. (US, World-War-I, slang) An officer owing his position to the need of the time rather than competence.
  2. Synonym of war child (“child born to a local parent and a parent belonging to a (usually occupying) foreign military force”)
    Synonyms:
    war child

Synonyms of war baby

Forms of war baby

pluralwar babies
alternative formwar-baby

Questions about war baby

What does war baby mean?
War baby means an officer owing his position to the need of the time rather than competence.
What part of speech is war baby?
War baby is a noun.
What is the plural of war baby?
The plural of war baby is war babies.

Words near war baby in the dictionary

  1. war
  2. War and Peace
  3. war artist
  4. war artists
  5. war babies
  6. war baby
  7. War Between the States
  8. war bond
  9. war bonds
  10. war bonnet
  11. war bonnets

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: war baby (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:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Flame, not lame-war baby.wav.

Cite this entry: “war baby.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/war_baby. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.