world war

plural world wars · alternative world-war

1. A war involving the major nations of the world.

   In the next world war / A jackknifed juggernaut

   1997, “Airbag”, in OK Computer, performed by Radiohead

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   Their lips met in one long silent kiss, and a moment later he had gone to strike the first blow in the coming world-war, and to bring the beginning of sorrows on the Tyrant of the North.

   1894, George Griffith, The Angel of the Revolution, page 69

   […] Armageddon, that world war with which the Second Coming is to be so closely associated.

   1921, Aldous Huxley, chapter 9, in Crome Yellow, London: Chatto & Windus

1. datedWorld War I.

   As late as the eve of the World War, two-thirds of the farm land belonged to only a quarter of a million proprietors: princes and barons and well-to-do townsmen.

   1939, Carl T. Schmidt, chapter I, in The Corporate State in Action, New York: Oxford University Press, page 6

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   The deep antagonism generated by the World War, however, represented a dramatic reversal for Germany’s emerging interest in cultural diplomacy, as both the Entente and the Central Powers aggressively discredited the political aims and the cultural achievements of their opponents.

   2015, Stephen Gross, chapter 3, in Export Empire: German Soft Power in Southeastern Europe, 1890–1945, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, →ISBN, page 121