sloop of war
- noun
- Archaic
:
sloop de guerra
- During the battle, the sloop of war fired its cannons at the approaching enemy ships.
Examples
-
Oh yes, I came of age upon the water, and I know everything that floats, from sloops of war to corpses.
Fiction book (1996) -
The historical museum has a model of a famous sloop of war that fought in the Civil War.
-
The crew of the sloop of war prepared for an encounter with pirates in the open sea.
Synonyms
140
3.6
A navy boat built for fighting at sea
43
8.2
A small, fast warship that escorts other ships
2
4.9
A military ship that moves and fights on the water's surface, not underwater
A ship a government uses for fighting at sea
A large armed ship that uses sails and carries heavy guns before the mid 1800s
How Armed
- Archaic
1
9.9
- Specialized
5
8.2
- Specialized
43
8.2
- Archaic
- Specialized
7
6.6
Surface Forms
Morphology
sloop + of + war
The phrase is compositionally formed from 'sloop' (a type of small ship) + 'of' + 'war' (military conflict), so a learner who knows those constituents would infer it refers to a sloop used in warfare — i.e., a warship. While the precise technical detail about armament or single-deck arrangement is specialist, the core meaning 'a warship of the sloop type' is directly derivable, making it transparent.
Etymology
Sloop of war comes from the small ship called a sloop that was fitted for battle. Because these ships carried their guns on a single deck and were quick and easy to move, the name came to mean 'a small, fast warship with cannons on one deck'.