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warfare

UK/ˈwɔːfɛə/US/ˈwɔɹfɛɹ/
nounC1Common in everyday speech and writing · #4,907 of 15,258leans written

Warfare is the activity of fighting a war. Modern warfare, trench warfare, chemical warfare.

It takes a modifier and names a kind of fighting: guerrilla warfare, siege warfare, economic warfare. The laws of war regulate it and are broken constantly, which is not the same as their being useless. The fare in it means going, as in seafare and thoroughfare.

Definitions of warfare

  1. 1nounwarfareThe activity of fighting a war.C1

    “The museum shows how warfare changed after the invention of the tank.”

warfare is a fighting.

Where it comes from

War plus fare, from an old sense of fare meaning a going or journey. Thoroughfare keeps the same word.

  1. Middle English

    werre-faringe

  2. English, today

    warfare

Built from

  • werfarynge · Middle English — waging war, warfare (literally “going to war”)

From war + fare; perhaps a shortening of Middle English werre-faringe, werfarynge (“waging war, warfare”) literally “going to war”.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practise this word

warfare in the wild

  • Offensive biological warfare in international armed conflicts is a war crime under the 1925 Geneva Protocol and several international humanitarian law treaties.

    Biological warfare

  • During the Renaissance and the early modern period, siege warfare dominated the conduct of war in Europe.

    Siege

  • Aerial warfare is the use of military aircraft and other flying machines in warfare.

    Aerial warfare

From Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. These sentences were written by other people about their own subjects; they are here to show the word at work, not as anybody’s opinion.