state of war

1. 1.

   a legal state created by a declaration of war and ended by official declaration during which the international rules of war apply

   “war was declared in November but actual fighting did not begin until the following spring”

   Synonymswar

   Broaderhostility

   Narrowerproxy war

   war

Questions about state of war

What does state of war mean?

state of war means "a legal state created by a declaration of war and ended by official declaration during which the international rules of war apply".

What is another word for state of war?

Close synonyms include war. 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 state of war a common word?

state of war 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.