ballista

Other forms of ballista

plural

ballistae

Forms marked · are formed by the regular rule rather than recorded in the source data. English keeps a few hundred irregulars and the rest follow the pattern, so the rule is right far more often than not — but it is a rule, and the mark says so.

Questions about ballista

What does ballista mean?

ballista means "an engine that provided medieval artillery used during sieges; a heavy war engine for hurling large stones and other missiles".

How many syllables are in ballista?

ballista has 3 syllables: bal-li-sta. The stress falls on "bal".

What is another word for ballista?

Close synonyms include catapult, arbalest, arbalist, bricole, mangonel. Each sense on this page lists its own synonyms, because a word with several meanings rarely has one substitute that works for all of them.

Is ballista a common word?

ballista is banded "Rare" — specialist or archaic — most readers will not have met it. The band comes from how often the word appears in a large corpus of everyday English, not from an editor's impression.