armament

noun

ar·​ma·​ment ˈär-mə-mənt 

 also  ˈärm-mənt

1

: a military or naval force

2

a

: the aggregate of a nation's military strength

b

: weapons, arms

3

: the process of preparing for war

Examples of armament in a Sentence

The country's armament will take years.

a small nation that is determined to have adequate armaments

Recent Examples on the Web

Also, critically, U.S. officials expressed concern about Assad’s large stockpiles of armament, including missiles and chemical weapons, that could end up in the hands of the rebels. —Tracy Wilkinson, Los Angeles Times, 8 Dec. 2024

Nobel, an extremely wealthy Swedish chemist, engineer, innovator, and armaments manufacturer, owned 350 patents, the most famous of which was dynamite. —Eli Amdur, Forbes, 23 Nov. 2024

The armaments transfers from North Korea to Russia violated United Nations Security Council arms sanctions against North Korea that Russia supported after Pyongyang's nuclear and missile tests in the 2000s and 2010s. —Jacob Knutson, Axios, 23 Oct. 2024

The plan accepts Western fatigue, that its armament production cannot keep pace, and that its values are wasteful. —Nick Paton Walsh, CNN, 29 Nov. 2024

Word History

Etymology

probably borrowed from French armement "action of arming, equipping of an armed force" (from armer "to arm entry 2" + -ment -ment), reshaped after Latin armāmenta (neuter plural) "sailing gear of a ship, equipment, implements," from armāre "to arm entry 2, equip" + -menta, plural of -mentum -ment

First Known Use

1632, in the meaning defined at sense 1

Kids Definition

armament

noun

ar·​ma·​ment ˈär-mə-mənt 

1

: the military strength and equipment of a nation

2

: a supply of war materials

3

: the process of preparing for war