noun
battleship
BA-tuhl-shihp
noun
1
A large, heavily armoured warship carrying big guns, once the dominant class of naval vessel but now largely retired in favour of missile-armed ships.
"The museum ship is a decommissioned battleship from the Second World War."
"Building a battleship took enormous amounts of steel and manpower."
2
A grid-based guessing game in which players try to locate and sink each other's hidden ships.
"We played battleship on paper during the long car journey."
How to Use Battleship
Learner’s notesIn plain EnglishA huge armoured warship with big guns, or the paper-and-pencil guessing game named after it.
Common pairings
sink a battleship
a battleship-grey hull
play battleship
Word Forms
battleships plural
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The museum ship is a decommissioned _____ from the Second World War.
Etymology
Short for "line-of-battle ship," first recorded in the late 1700s; later shortened again to "battleship."