See fleet in being on Wiktionary
{
"etymology_text": "First used in 1690 by British Admiral Arthur Herbert, 1st Earl of Torrington, in defending his strategy of keeping his fleet in port until reinforcements arrived, rather than engaging with the superior French force.",
"forms": [
{
"form": "fleets in being",
"tags": [
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]
},
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"lang_code": "en",
"pos": "noun",
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"name": "Military",
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"ref": "1895, “The Armada”, in The Quarterly Review, volume 182, number 363, John Murray, page 6:",
"text": "In point of fact command of the sea and a fleet in being are mutually exclusive terms.",
"type": "quote"
},
{
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"ref": "1994, Colin S. Gray, The Navy in the Post-Cold War World: The Uses and Value of Strategic Sea Power, page 85:",
"text": "But even for that navy, with its strong tradition of offensive action, there were occasions when the fleet-in-being strategy was prudent and effective.",
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"ref": "2006, John J. Klein, Space Warfare: Strategy, Principles, and Policy, page 122:",
"text": "Lines of communication in space, on the other hand, move physical elements, but they are also used to move non-physical elements as well, such as data and information. Consequently, the space equivalent to \"fleet in being\" should recognize this fundamental difference. […] Whereas the naval fleet in being strategy uses ships to dispute command of the sea, a space strategy employing a force in being may use physical assets as well as non-physical means.",
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"ref": "2007, James B. Wood, Japanese Military Strategy in the Pacific War: Was Defeat Inevitable?, page 81:",
"text": "It should instead have been saved as a reserve force, a fleet in being, as long as possible, and then committed in a Riskflotte operation at a key juncture, striking a decisive blow even if it involved its sacrifice.",
"type": "quote"
}
],
"glosses": [
"A naval fleet which exerts an influence while remaining in port."
],
"id": "en-fleet_in_being-en-noun-LiHFHMWV",
"links": [
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[
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],
"raw_glosses": [
"(military, navy, countable) A naval fleet which exerts an influence while remaining in port."
],
"tags": [
"countable"
],
"topics": [
"government",
"military",
"navy",
"politics",
"war"
],
"translations": [
{
"code": "cmn",
"lang": "Chinese Mandarin",
"roman": "cúnzài jiànduì",
"sense": "naval fleet",
"word": "存在艦隊 /存在舰队"
},
{
"code": "fr",
"lang": "French",
"sense": "naval fleet",
"tags": [
"feminine"
],
"word": "flotte de dissuasion"
},
{
"code": "de",
"lang": "German",
"sense": "naval fleet",
"tags": [
"feminine"
],
"word": "Präsenzflotte"
},
{
"code": "he",
"lang": "Hebrew",
"sense": "naval fleet",
"word": "עֶצֶם קִיוּם הַצִי"
},
{
"code": "it",
"lang": "Italian",
"sense": "naval fleet",
"tags": [
"feminine"
],
"word": "flotta in potenza"
},
{
"code": "es",
"lang": "Spanish",
"sense": "naval fleet",
"tags": [
"feminine"
],
"word": "flota en potencia"
}
],
"wikipedia": [
"fleet in being"
]
}
],
"word": "fleet in being"
}
{
"etymology_text": "First used in 1690 by British Admiral Arthur Herbert, 1st Earl of Torrington, in defending his strategy of keeping his fleet in port until reinforcements arrived, rather than engaging with the superior French force.",
"forms": [
{
"form": "fleets in being",
"tags": [
"plural"
]
},
{
"form": "fleet-in-being",
"tags": [
"alternative"
]
}
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"lang_code": "en",
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"ref": "1895, “The Armada”, in The Quarterly Review, volume 182, number 363, John Murray, page 6:",
"text": "In point of fact command of the sea and a fleet in being are mutually exclusive terms.",
"type": "quote"
},
{
"bold_text_offsets": [
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101,
115
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],
"ref": "1994, Colin S. Gray, The Navy in the Post-Cold War World: The Uses and Value of Strategic Sea Power, page 85:",
"text": "But even for that navy, with its strong tradition of offensive action, there were occasions when the fleet-in-being strategy was prudent and effective.",
"type": "quote"
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221
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305
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"ref": "2006, John J. Klein, Space Warfare: Strategy, Principles, and Policy, page 122:",
"text": "Lines of communication in space, on the other hand, move physical elements, but they are also used to move non-physical elements as well, such as data and information. Consequently, the space equivalent to \"fleet in being\" should recognize this fundamental difference. […] Whereas the naval fleet in being strategy uses ships to dispute command of the sea, a space strategy employing a force in being may use physical assets as well as non-physical means.",
"type": "quote"
},
{
"bold_text_offsets": [
[
56,
70
]
],
"ref": "2007, James B. Wood, Japanese Military Strategy in the Pacific War: Was Defeat Inevitable?, page 81:",
"text": "It should instead have been saved as a reserve force, a fleet in being, as long as possible, and then committed in a Riskflotte operation at a key juncture, striking a decisive blow even if it involved its sacrifice.",
"type": "quote"
}
],
"glosses": [
"A naval fleet which exerts an influence while remaining in port."
],
"links": [
[
"military",
"military"
],
[
"fleet",
"fleet"
]
],
"raw_glosses": [
"(military, navy, countable) A naval fleet which exerts an influence while remaining in port."
],
"tags": [
"countable"
],
"topics": [
"government",
"military",
"navy",
"politics",
"war"
],
"wikipedia": [
"fleet in being"
]
}
],
"translations": [
{
"code": "cmn",
"lang": "Chinese Mandarin",
"roman": "cúnzài jiànduì",
"sense": "naval fleet",
"word": "存在艦隊 /存在舰队"
},
{
"code": "fr",
"lang": "French",
"sense": "naval fleet",
"tags": [
"feminine"
],
"word": "flotte de dissuasion"
},
{
"code": "de",
"lang": "German",
"sense": "naval fleet",
"tags": [
"feminine"
],
"word": "Präsenzflotte"
},
{
"code": "he",
"lang": "Hebrew",
"sense": "naval fleet",
"word": "עֶצֶם קִיוּם הַצִי"
},
{
"code": "it",
"lang": "Italian",
"sense": "naval fleet",
"tags": [
"feminine"
],
"word": "flotta in potenza"
},
{
"code": "es",
"lang": "Spanish",
"sense": "naval fleet",
"tags": [
"feminine"
],
"word": "flota en potencia"
}
],
"word": "fleet in being"
}
Download raw JSONL data for fleet in being meaning in All languages combined (3.7kB)
This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable All languages combined dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2025-06-01 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2025-05-20 using wiktextract (3dadd05 and f1c2b61). The data shown on this site has been post-processed and various details (e.g., extra categories) removed, some information disambiguated, and additional data merged from other sources. See the raw data download page for the unprocessed wiktextract data.
If you use this data in academic research, please cite Tatu Ylonen: Wiktextract: Wiktionary as Machine-Readable Structured Data, Proceedings of the 13th Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC), pp. 1317-1325, Marseille, 20-25 June 2022. Linking to the relevant page(s) under https://kaikki.org would also be greatly appreciated.