warfare
Syllables: war·fareUK/ˈwɔːfɛə//ˈwɔɹfɛɹ/
warfare noun: the waging of war or armed conflict against an enemy.
Noun
warfare (usually uncountable, plural warfares)
- The waging of war or armed conflict against an enemy.
- The Philistines gathered their armies together for warfare, to fight with Israel.1611, The Holy Bible, […] (King James Version), London: […] Robert Barker, […], →OCLC, 1 Samuel 28:1
- Military operations of some particular kind e.g. guerrilla warfare.
Verb
warfare (third-person singular simple present warfares, present participle warfaring, simple past and past participle warfared)
- To lead a military life; to carry on continual wars.
warfare meaning in Urdu, Bengali, Telugu and Malayalam
warfare in Urdu
- حرب, جنگ آوری, محاربہ تنازع
warfare in Bengali
- যুদ্ধ, সংগ্রাম
warfare in Telugu
- వార్ఫరింగ్
warfare in Malayalam
- യുദ്ധം, പോരാട്ടം, കലഹം
More languagesFewer languages
- warfare in Kannada
- ಕಾಳಗ, ಹೋರಾಟ, ಮೊನೆ
- warfare in Gujarati
- યુદ્ધોલ્લાસ
- warfare in Thai
- การสู้รบ
- warfare in Vietnamese
- chiến tranh
Examples of warfare in a sentence
- In warfare, whoever opens fire first has a greater chance of victory.
- "They would have paid their blood-tax, done their own part in the immemorial human warfare against nature."
- The government shifted from kinetic operations to economic warfare to pressure the regime without deploying troops.
Forms of warfare
| Noun | |
|---|---|
| plural | warfares |
| Verb | |
| third-person singular present | warfares |
| present participle | warfaring |
| past participle | warfared |
| past | warfared |
Origin of warfare
From war + fare; perhaps a shortening of Middle English werre-faringe, werfarynge (“waging war, warfare”, literally “going to war”).
Words formed from warfare
- antiwarfare
- asymmetrical warfare
- asymmetric warfare
- attrition warfare
- biological warfare
- chemical warfare
- class warfare
- cognitive warfare
- conventional warfare
- cyberwarfare
- economic warfare
- electronic warfare
- e-warfare
- germ warfare
- guerrilla warfare
- hybrid warfare
- information warfare
- irregular warfare
- lawfare
- memetic warfare
- nuclear warfare
- open warfare
- psychological warfare
- siege warfare
- spiritual warfare
- trench warfare
- urban warfare
- warfarer
- warfare state
Phrases with warfare
Questions about warfare
- What does warfare mean?
- Warfare means the waging of war or armed conflict against an enemy.
- What is warfare in Urdu?
- Warfare in Urdu is حرب, جنگ آوری, محاربہ تنازع. See Warfare meaning in Urdu.
- What part of speech is warfare?
- Warfare can be a noun or a verb.
- How do you pronounce warfare?
- Warfare is pronounced /ˈwɔɹfɛɹ/ (US).
- What is the plural of warfare?
- The plural of warfare is warfares.
Words near warfare in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: warfare (page history and authors); warfare (Urdu Wiktionary) (page history and authors); warfare (Bengali Wiktionary) (page history and authors); warfare (Telugu, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); warfare (Malayalam Wiktionary) (page history and authors); warfare (Kannada Wiktionary) (page history and authors); warfare (Gujarati, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license). 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: en-us-warfare.ogg.
Cite this entry: “warfare.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/warfare. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.