warlord

UK/ˈwɔːlɔːd/US/ˈwɔɹlɔɹd/

nounB2+Occasional — familiar, but not everyday · #9,393 of 15,258neutral

Other forms: warlords

A warlord is a military leader ruling a region by force. Rival warlords.

The authority comes from armed men rather than from any office or election. A warlord fills the space left when a state stops functioning.

Definitions of warlord

1nounwarlordA military leader ruling a region by force.B2+
“One warlord controlled every road into the province.”

warlord is a leader.

Where it comes from

War plus lord, a compound modelled on older titles.

From war + lord.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practise this word

warlord in the wild

In 1922, Chen and Sun broke over political disagreements, after which the Yunnan and Guangxi warlords helped Sun regain power in 1923.
Warlord Era
After Yuan died in 1916, the army split into various warlord factions competing for power, ushering in the Warlord Era.
Beiyang government
The Fengtian Government was the faction that supported warlord Zhang Zuolin during China's Warlord Era.
Fengtian clique
The Yunnan clique was one of several mutually hostile warlord cliques that split from the Beiyang Government in the Republic of China's warlord era.
Yunnan clique
The Shanxi clique, also known as the Jin clique, was one of several military factions that split off from the Beiyang Army during China's warlord era.
Shanxi clique

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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.

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