"first strike" meaning in English

See first strike in All languages combined, or Wiktionary

Noun

Audio: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Naomi Persephone Amethyst (NaomiAmethyst)-first strike.wav Forms: first strikes [plural]
Head templates: {{en-noun}} first strike (plural first strikes)
  1. (military) An attack (typically nuclear) launched without warning in the absence of a prior attack by one's opponent, with the intention of destroying one's opponent's ability to retaliate. Synonyms: decapitation strike Hypernyms: strike, attack Coordinate_terms: preemptive strike, counterstrike
    Sense id: en-first_strike-en-noun-PyzuUyMC Categories (other): English links with manual fragments, Military, Nuclear warfare Disambiguation of Nuclear warfare: 40 46 14 Topics: government, military, politics, war
  2. (criminal law) A first offense by a lawbreaker, as counted by a three-strikes law.
    Sense id: en-first_strike-en-noun-j95AAdlx Categories (other): Criminal law, English entries with incorrect language header, Pages with 1 entry, Pages with entries, Nuclear warfare Disambiguation of English entries with incorrect language header: 28 50 22 Disambiguation of Pages with 1 entry: 31 59 9 Disambiguation of Pages with entries: 27 54 19 Disambiguation of Nuclear warfare: 40 46 14
  3. (numismatics) One of the first few coins struck from a new set of dies.
    Sense id: en-first_strike-en-noun-BOQXhdUe Categories (other): Currency, Nuclear warfare Disambiguation of Nuclear warfare: 40 46 14 Topics: hobbies, lifestyle, numismatics
The following are not (yet) sense-disambiguated
Related terms: second strike, Dead Hand, shock and awe

Inflected forms

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  "related": [
    {
      "_dis1": "34 33 33",
      "word": "second strike"
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      "_dis1": "34 33 33",
      "word": "Dead Hand"
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        {
          "word": "preemptive strike"
        },
        {
          "word": "counterstrike"
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        {
          "text": "Near-synonym: decapitation strike"
        },
        {
          "bold_text_offsets": [
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              80,
              92
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          ],
          "text": "During the Cold War, both sides feared that the other was preparing to launch a first strike.",
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          "ref": "2019 August 26, qntm, “Unthreaded”, in There Is No Antimemetics Division, →ISBN, page 162:",
          "text": "In the end, the question proved to be academic. When SCP-3125 arrived, whether it knew ω-0 was there or not, it took no special action against it, and had no need to. Most of ω-0's members' anchors were Foundationers, or Foundation-adjacent. With those people's minds blown away in the first strike, the dense web of mutual memory which had held the Task Force together since its formation tore loose. More than half of the Task Force was cast into the void and died; the final, real death they had evaded for years.",
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        "An attack (typically nuclear) launched without warning in the absence of a prior attack by one's opponent, with the intention of destroying one's opponent's ability to retaliate."
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        "(military) An attack (typically nuclear) launched without warning in the absence of a prior attack by one's opponent, with the intention of destroying one's opponent's ability to retaliate."
      ],
      "synonyms": [
        {
          "word": "decapitation strike"
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        "military",
        "politics",
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          "_dis": "40 46 14",
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        "A first offense by a lawbreaker, as counted by a three-strikes law."
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        "(criminal law) A first offense by a lawbreaker, as counted by a three-strikes law."
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          "type": "example"
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      ],
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        "One of the first few coins struck from a new set of dies."
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          "die",
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        "(numismatics) One of the first few coins struck from a new set of dies."
      ],
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        "hobbies",
        "lifestyle",
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        "(military) An attack (typically nuclear) launched without warning in the absence of a prior attack by one's opponent, with the intention of destroying one's opponent's ability to retaliate."
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        "(criminal law) A first offense by a lawbreaker, as counted by a three-strikes law."
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        "(numismatics) One of the first few coins struck from a new set of dies."
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}

Download raw JSONL data for first strike meaning in English (4.7kB)


This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable English dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2025-12-29 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2025-12-20 using wiktextract (cdfa371 and 9905b1f). 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.