warproof means immune to being degraded or destroyed by war. It carries an Arena rating of 1409, earned across 6 head-to-head judged battles.
Among words judged in Lexicurio's Arena, warproof ranks #1,693 of 17,132 for Most Betrayed by Its Sound, #5,003 of 17,126 for Most Elegant Words, #6,115 of 17,127 for Words That Escaped Their Books, #6,120 of 17,131 for Scariest Words.
Why “warproof” is a great word
Immune to being degraded or destroyed by the ravages of armed conflict. The word is forged from Old English *wyrre* for "armed conflict" and Old French *prove*, via Late Latin *proba*, meaning a test or the evidence of having withstood one. Unlike "battle-hardened," which emphasizes the toughening wrought by experience, or "invulnerable," which suggests a blanket imperviousness, warproof implies a specific, engineered resistance to the particular entropy of war. It is the concrete pillbox standing sentinel in a field of poppies, the archival film reel surviving a library's burning, and the lone, scarred tree still putting out green shoots in a shell-cratered landscape—a testament not to an absence of violence, but to a quiet, stubborn persistence in its very midst.
Etymology
From war + proof.
adj
- Immune to being degraded or destroyed by war.
noun
- Valour tried by war.e.g.“On, on, you noblest English, / Whose blood is fet from fathers of warproof.” — 1599 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Life of Henry the Fift”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount,
Definitions & examples from Wiktionary (CC BY-SA 3.0).
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