What does battleship mean?
A battleship is a class of heavily armoured warship mounting the largest and longest-range guns afloat, once regarded as the ultimate expression of naval power. From the launch of HMS Dreadnought in 1906 until the Second World War, battleships formed the backbone of major navies, and rival fleets measured their prestige by the number they could deploy. The rise of aircraft carriers and guided missiles made them militarily obsolete, and today surviving examples serve mainly as museums. Beyond naval history, the word lives on in popular culture: it names the classic two-player guessing game in which opponents fire at coordinates on a grid to sink hidden ships, and it survives in everyday language through 'battleship grey', a dark neutral colour named for the warships' paint. The word therefore evokes both industrial-scale military might and nostalgic parlour entertainment.
nounA battleship is a large, heavily armoured warship equipped with powerful long-range guns, historically the most powerful type of surface warship in a navy. The term also refers to the classic guessing game of that name.
- A large, heavily armoured warship carrying the largest-calibre naval guns, the dominant capital ship from the late 19th century until World War II.
- The two-player guessing game in which players try to locate and sink each other's concealed ships on a grid.
"The museum's centrepiece was a decommissioned battleship, its sixteen-inch guns still trained on the horizon."
"By the end of the Second World War, aircraft carriers had rendered the battleship largely obsolete."
"They spent the rainy afternoon playing battleship, each guarding their grid with exaggerated secrecy."
Standard plural; used both for multiple warships and for multiple games or instances of the board game.
"The treaty limited each signatory nation to a fixed tonnage of battleships."
The Battleship board game predates plastic boards entirely — players originally plotted their shots on pencil-and-paper grids before Milton Bradley commercialised it in 1967.
Reviewed by Deb Chak, Editor. AI-assisted content curated by RJS Tech Solutions LLP.
Etymology of battleship
Battleship is an English compound of 'battle' and 'ship'. The noun emerged in the late eighteenth century as a shortening of 'line-of-battle ship', the designation for vessels powerful enough to stand in the line of engagement. Its modern meaning was cemented around HMS Dreadnought (1906), whose design gave rise to the terms 'dreadnought' and 'pre-dreadnought' for earlier classes. The root 'battle' traces back through Old French 'bataille' to late Latin 'battualia', related to fighting exercises.
How battleship is actually used
As a term for a warship, 'battleship' carries historical weight — no nation now keeps battleships in active front-line service, so modern usage often refers to museum ships or history. In informal British English, the word also names a drinking or children's guessing game. The compound colour term 'battleship grey' (or 'battleship gray' in US spelling) describes a dull dark grey and is widely used for paint and fashion.
Easily confused with battleship
Warship is the general term for any armed naval vessel, while battleship refers specifically to the largest, most heavily gunned class of surface combatant.
A battlefield is land where a battle is fought, whereas a battleship is a seagoing warship.