artillery
noun
Simple meaning
An army unit that uses big guns.
Pronunciation
Say it like this:
ahrtilereeSay the bold part a little louder.
IPA pronunciation (US)
ɑɹˈtɪlɚi
This word is pronounced essentially the same in American and British English, so one transcription covers both.
IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) is a standard way of writing speech sounds.
Definition
Everyday modern meanings first, grouped by part of speech.
noun
Large projectile weapons, in modern usage usually large guns, but also rocket artillery.
An army unit that uses big guns
An army unit that uses such weapons, or a military formation using projectile weapons, such as archers.
Large but transportable armament
Gunnery (design and manufacture of guns).
ukirelandslang
One or more guns.
Word Aura™
How this word commonly comes across.
Aura for this meaning
This meaning: Large projectile weapons, in modern usage usually large guns, but also rocket artillery.
Used this way, artillery is a specialist word that usually carries little praise or criticism of its own. This is a military use: it belongs to service and operational language.
- Emotional tone
- Neutral
- Formality
- Specialist/technical
- Intensity
- Not strongly marked
- How common
- Specialized
- Connotation
- Clinical and technical
- Usage feel
- Technical and specialized
Where it naturally appears
- Military
- Historical writing
- News/reporting
- Technical/specialist writing
Usage note
In general conversation this sense usually needs explaining — outside its field, people reach for a plainer word.
Word Aura describes common impressions, not a measurement. Tone changes with sentence, speaker, relationship and situation.
More ways to use artillery
- “During the war, the sound of artillery fire echoed across the valley.”noun
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More about this wordSynonyms, forms, origin
Synonyms
Sense: large projectile weapons
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Dictionary data from Wiktionary via the Free Dictionary API. Simple meanings, combinations and word intelligence are built from verified reference data, no AI is used to load this page.