take arms

1. 1.

   commence hostilities

   Synonymsgo to wartake up arms

   Broaderwar

Questions about take arms

What does take arms mean?

take arms means "commence hostilities".

What is another word for take arms?

Close synonyms include go to war, take up arms. 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 take arms a common word?

take arms is banded "Uncommon" — turns up in careful writing rather than conversation. The band comes from how often the word appears in a large corpus of everyday English, not from an editor's impression.