Skip to content
ARCHIEENGLISH
LearnPlayWordsRanking
  • Learn
  • Play
  • Words
  • Ranking
  • Mine
← Vocabulary

warhead

nounB2+Common in everyday speech and writing · #4,671 of 15,258neutral

Other forms: warheads

A warhead is the explosive front section of a missile. A nuclear warhead, the warhead detonated, warhead yield.

The word began with torpedoes, where a live war head had to be told apart from the inert practice one. Counting warheads rather than missiles is how arms treaties are written, since one missile may carry several.

US government DOD and/or DOE · Public domain

Definitions of warhead

  1. 1nounwarheadThe explosive front section of a missile.B2+

    “The missile carried a nuclear warhead.”

warhead is a part.

Where it comes from

War plus head, first used to distinguish a torpedo's live head from an inert exercise head.

From war + head, originally to distinguish a live war head of a torpedo from an inert exercise head. war chief.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practise this word

warhead in the wild

  • The W25 was a small nuclear warhead that was developed by the Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory for air-defense use.

    W25 (nuclear warhead)

  • The W54 was a tactical nuclear warhead developed by the United States in the late 1950s.

    W54

  • The very similar W84 warhead was deployed on the retired BGM-109G Ground Launched Cruise Missile.

    W80 (nuclear warhead)

  • The Trident II, a submarine-launched ballistic missile (SLBM) can be armed with up to eight W88 warheads.

    W88

  • The W88 is set to become the highest-yield warhead in the US arsenal when the B83 nuclear bomb is retired likely before 2027.

    W88

1 / 2

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.