Word of the Day:
ordnance
What It Means
Military equipment, especially weapons and ammunition.
Ordnance in Context
“What Mr. Vance’s trip made clear is that both sides think they emerged as the victor of the first round: the United States by dropping so much ordnance on Iran, the Iranians by surviving. Neither seems in the mood for compromise.”
Did You Know?
A reduced form of ordinance, which is attested from the late 14th century in the sense of “military equipment or provisions”. The sense of “artillery” arises in the early 15th century, the sense “military logistics” in the late 15th century. The shortened form ordnance arises by the 17th century, now often distinguished in writing from the other meanings of ordinance. Also doublet of ordonnance.
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: ordnance (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws chose the word and reformatted its meaning, examples and origin.
Cite this entry: “ordnance.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/ordnance. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.
