How to Use ordnance in a Sentence

ordnance

noun
  • The company was outfitted with 50-millimeter ordnance.
  • And at home, the land became littered with ordnance, the sea with spills of heavy oil.
    Damien Cave, New York Times, 12 Apr. 2023
  • As a rule of thumb, the U.N. assumes that ten per cent of ordnance fail to function.
    Isaac Chotiner, The New Yorker, 8 May 2024
  • Her grandfather died that day, not from the ordnance but from the shock that followed.
    Los Angeles Times, 26 Apr. 2022
  • Still the war ground on, and he was sent to Vietnam as an ordnance officer.
    Washington Post, 18 Nov. 2021
  • From there, the long-range planes have launched days-long flights to drop ordnance on Eastern Europe and the Middle East.
    Scott Canon, kansascity, 10 Aug. 2017
  • Another change in the ordnance would have ended what’s known as gate fees.
    Christopher Harress | Charress@al.com, al.com, 17 June 2019
  • And the Sumy region in the north was hit with more than 100 pieces of ordnance Thursday night, according to the governor.
    Ian Lovett, WSJ, 19 Aug. 2022
  • The grenade in the shadow box was inert, but the other was believed to be a live military ordnance.
    USA TODAY, 24 Oct. 2019
  • Both the rebels and the regime violated the terms of the truce, lobbing ordnance and explosive drones at each other.
    The Economist, 5 Sep. 2019
  • The squadron’s ordnance handlers interpreted it to mean the cable should not be plugged in until the plane was parked on a flight deck.
    Kyle Mizokami, Popular Mechanics, 9 May 2023
  • Even when combat ends in Ukraine's fields and towns, danger still lurks in the form of mines and unexploded ordnance.
    Dominique Soguel, The Christian Science Monitor, 15 Nov. 2022
  • The Neue Suedtiroler Tageszeitung identified the ordnance as an aerial bomb.
    San Diego Union-Tribune, 20 Oct. 2019
  • In that time, more than eighteen million hours of labour produced some billion pounds of ordnance.
    Amy Shira Teitel, Discover Magazine, 19 Mar. 2019
  • She was concerned the ordnance maintainers would be rushed to complete the turnaround.
    San Diego Union-Tribune, 5 Aug. 2019
  • Most ordnance handlers understood that to mean it should not be plugged in until the plane was lined up on the catapult, ready to launch.
    Kyle Mizokami, Popular Mechanics, 9 May 2023
  • And aid groups had warned that the jungles of Kayah were now littered with unexploded ordnance.
    Yan Naing, Washington Post, 7 Nov. 2023
  • On a visit on Thursday, ordnance whizzed, thumped and boomed in all directions.
    New York Times, 5 May 2022
  • From the ground around the command post protruded the fins of unexploded ordnance.
    New York Times, 16 Jan. 2022
  • For more than eight months, Zelenyi Hai, in Ukraine’s southern Mykolaiv region, was close to the front line, and its potato and onion fields were sown with ordnance.
    Anastacia Galouchka, Washington Post, 13 Dec. 2022
  • Before any of that can happen, the Army would need to clean up unexploded ordnance from its tests, which could be costly and take a while.
    Hayden Carpenter, Outside Online, 3 July 2018
  • As such, crews will need to safely clear the area of any unexploded ordnances before opening it up to the public.
    Sarah Kuta, Smithsonian Magazine, 27 Mar. 2023
  • First responders weren't able to access the lot because there was still a significant amount of ordnance on the ground.
    Emily Shapiro, ABC News, 16 Mar. 2021
  • In the following days, Japanese sorties rained ordnance on the port.
    Peter Eisner, Smithsonian, 29 Sep. 2017
  • In the following days, Japanese sorties rained ordnance on the port.
    Peter Eisner, Smithsonian, 22 Aug. 2017
  • Hikers are warned to stay on the trails in case unexploded ordnance remains.
    Washington Post, 24 Sep. 2021
  • Russia’s Defense Ministry said in a statement that the episode was caused by the explosion of stockpiled ordnance for warplanes at the base.
    Christiaan Triebert, New York Times, 10 Aug. 2022
  • The bomb squad secured the ordnance in a containment vessel and disposed of it in a secure location.
    Julian Gill, Houston Chronicle, 6 Nov. 2019
  • Authorities are asking beachgoers to be careful; as many as 30 percent of the ordnances may still be live.
    Sarah Kuta, Smithsonian Magazine, 3 May 2024
  • Trevor Ball, who was a senior explosive ordnance disposal team member in the US Army, agreed that the images likely showed part of the fin of a small-diameter bomb.
    Abeer Salman, CNN, 15 July 2024

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'ordnance.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

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