destroyer
noun
Simple meaning
A larger warship with guided missile armament, usually intended for air defence or anti-ship roles.
Pronunciation
Say it like this:
dihstroyerSay the bold part a little louder.
IPA pronunciation (US)
dɪstˈɹɔɪɚ
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
militarynautical
A larger warship with guided missile armament, usually intended for air defence or anti-ship roles. Often, but not always, larger than a frigate and smaller than a cruiser.
Word at a Glance
- Difficulty
- B2 · Upper Intermediate (estimated)
- Frequency
- Uncommon
- Formality
- Technical
Word Aura™
How this word commonly comes across.
Aura for this meaning
This meaning: A larger warship with guided missile armament, usually intended for air defence or anti-ship roles. Often, but not always, larger than a frigate and smaller than a cruiser.
Used this way, destroyer is a specialist word that usually carries little praise or criticism of its own. It stays understated rather than dramatic. This is a military use: it belongs to service and operational language.
- Emotional tone
- Neutral
- Formality
- Specialist/technical
- Intensity
- Mild
- 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.
Share your sentence
Common Patterns and Combinations
How this word naturally appears with others.
Word Family
Related forms, grouped by how they connect.
Inflected forms
Grammatical variations of the same word.
Do away with, cause the destruction or undoing of.
Compound terms
Established multiword terms.
Warship smaller than a destroyer.
A small fast lightly armored but heavily armed warship.
An armored vehicle equipped with an antitank gun and capable of high speeds.
Small destroyer that was the forerunner of modern destroyers.
Ask Vocabaura
Understand the word your way.
What Does It Mean Here?
Words can change meaning depending on context.
Use it yourself
Knowing “destroyer” starts when you use it. Pick a next step, all free.
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.