"war of words" meaning in English

See war of words in All languages combined, or Wiktionary

Noun

Audio: En-au-war of words.ogg [Australia] Forms: wars of words [plural]
Head templates: {{en-noun|wars of words}} war of words (plural wars of words)
  1. (idiomatic) A heated exchange of threatening or inflammatory statements. Tags: idiomatic Translations (heated exchange of statements): sanasota (Finnish), 舌戦 (zessen) (alt: ぜっせん) (Japanese), 論戦 (ronsen) (alt: ろんせん) (Japanese)
    Sense id: en-war_of_words-en-noun--AgGIydV Categories (other): English entries with incorrect language header

Inflected forms

Download JSON data for war of words meaning in English (3.2kB)

{
  "forms": [
    {
      "form": "wars of words",
      "tags": [
        "plural"
      ]
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      "expansion": "war of words (plural wars of words)",
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  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "noun",
  "senses": [
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          "kind": "other",
          "name": "English entries with incorrect language header",
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          "source": "w"
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      "examples": [
        {
          "ref": "1891, Thomas Hardy, chapter 26, in Tess of the d'Urbervilles",
          "text": "The young man much resented this directness of attack, and in the war of words which followed when they met he did not scruple publicly to insult Mr Clare, without respect for his gray hairs.",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "1901, Gilbert Keith Chesterton, chapter 13, in The Defendant",
          "text": "The lower classes live in a state of war, a war of words. Their readiness is the product of the same fiery individualism as the readiness of the old fighting oligarchs. Any cabman has to be ready with his tongue, as any gentleman of the last century had to be ready with his sword.",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2007 February 22, Virginia Heffernan, “Television: No Sex, Please, We’re Engaged”, in New York Times, retrieved 2017-08-09",
          "text": "[T]hese two have brutal, contemptuous wars of words — the kind you might expect from divorcing 40-somethings.",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2022 January 12, “Network News: Further extension to Transport for London emergency funding”, in RAIL, number 948, page 8",
          "text": "In a war of words that has broken out between Khan and Secretary of State for Transport Grant Shapps, the Mayor was accused of sending revenue-raising proposals to Shapps some three weeks late, giving him little choice but to extend negotiations. Khan countered this by alleging that 'unfair' conditions, such as raising council tax, are being attached to any new funding deal that would \"punish Londoners\" for the effect the pandemic has had on passenger numbers. He added: \"These short-term deals are trapping TfL on life support rather than putting it on the path to long-term sustainability.\"",
          "type": "quotation"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "A heated exchange of threatening or inflammatory statements."
      ],
      "id": "en-war_of_words-en-noun--AgGIydV",
      "links": [
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        [
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        [
          "statement",
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      ],
      "raw_glosses": [
        "(idiomatic) A heated exchange of threatening or inflammatory statements."
      ],
      "tags": [
        "idiomatic"
      ],
      "translations": [
        {
          "code": "fi",
          "lang": "Finnish",
          "sense": "heated exchange of statements",
          "word": "sanasota"
        },
        {
          "alt": "ぜっせん",
          "code": "ja",
          "lang": "Japanese",
          "roman": "zessen",
          "sense": "heated exchange of statements",
          "word": "舌戦"
        },
        {
          "alt": "ろんせん",
          "code": "ja",
          "lang": "Japanese",
          "roman": "ronsen",
          "sense": "heated exchange of statements",
          "word": "論戦"
        }
      ]
    }
  ],
  "sounds": [
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      "audio": "En-au-war of words.ogg",
      "mp3_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/transcoded/3/3f/En-au-war_of_words.ogg/En-au-war_of_words.ogg.mp3",
      "ogg_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/3f/En-au-war_of_words.ogg",
      "tags": [
        "Australia"
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      "text": "Audio (AU)"
    }
  ],
  "word": "war of words"
}
{
  "forms": [
    {
      "form": "wars of words",
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  "head_templates": [
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  "lang_code": "en",
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        "English idioms",
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        "English terms with audio links",
        "English terms with quotations",
        "Quotation templates to be cleaned"
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      "examples": [
        {
          "ref": "1891, Thomas Hardy, chapter 26, in Tess of the d'Urbervilles",
          "text": "The young man much resented this directness of attack, and in the war of words which followed when they met he did not scruple publicly to insult Mr Clare, without respect for his gray hairs.",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "1901, Gilbert Keith Chesterton, chapter 13, in The Defendant",
          "text": "The lower classes live in a state of war, a war of words. Their readiness is the product of the same fiery individualism as the readiness of the old fighting oligarchs. Any cabman has to be ready with his tongue, as any gentleman of the last century had to be ready with his sword.",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2007 February 22, Virginia Heffernan, “Television: No Sex, Please, We’re Engaged”, in New York Times, retrieved 2017-08-09",
          "text": "[T]hese two have brutal, contemptuous wars of words — the kind you might expect from divorcing 40-somethings.",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2022 January 12, “Network News: Further extension to Transport for London emergency funding”, in RAIL, number 948, page 8",
          "text": "In a war of words that has broken out between Khan and Secretary of State for Transport Grant Shapps, the Mayor was accused of sending revenue-raising proposals to Shapps some three weeks late, giving him little choice but to extend negotiations. Khan countered this by alleging that 'unfair' conditions, such as raising council tax, are being attached to any new funding deal that would \"punish Londoners\" for the effect the pandemic has had on passenger numbers. He added: \"These short-term deals are trapping TfL on life support rather than putting it on the path to long-term sustainability.\"",
          "type": "quotation"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "A heated exchange of threatening or inflammatory statements."
      ],
      "links": [
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          "heated",
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          "exchange",
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        [
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        [
          "inflammatory",
          "inflammatory"
        ],
        [
          "statement",
          "statement"
        ]
      ],
      "raw_glosses": [
        "(idiomatic) A heated exchange of threatening or inflammatory statements."
      ],
      "tags": [
        "idiomatic"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "sounds": [
    {
      "audio": "En-au-war of words.ogg",
      "mp3_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/transcoded/3/3f/En-au-war_of_words.ogg/En-au-war_of_words.ogg.mp3",
      "ogg_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/3f/En-au-war_of_words.ogg",
      "tags": [
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      "text": "Audio (AU)"
    }
  ],
  "translations": [
    {
      "code": "fi",
      "lang": "Finnish",
      "sense": "heated exchange of statements",
      "word": "sanasota"
    },
    {
      "alt": "ぜっせん",
      "code": "ja",
      "lang": "Japanese",
      "roman": "zessen",
      "sense": "heated exchange of statements",
      "word": "舌戦"
    },
    {
      "alt": "ろんせん",
      "code": "ja",
      "lang": "Japanese",
      "roman": "ronsen",
      "sense": "heated exchange of statements",
      "word": "論戦"
    }
  ],
  "word": "war of words"
}

This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable English dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2024-04-30 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2024-04-21 using wiktextract (210104c and c9440ce). 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.