nuke
/n(j)uk/
Word Rarity
Rare
Frequency: Zipf frequency 3.29 in modern English
8
Scrabble Score
4
Letters
1
Syllables
4
Unique Chars
Meaning
noun
Something that destroys or negates, especially on a catastrophic scale.
American usage; Colloquial
noun
A person (such as a sailor in a navy or a scientist) who works with nuclear weapons or nuclear power.
American usage; Colloquial
noun
A cautionary flag placed on a release to label it as "bad" for some reason or another (e.g., being a dupe of a previous release or containing malware).
American usage; Colloquial
Example Sentences
- ""Mini-nukes" are "among the active unresolved nuclear issues in NATO at the moment," according to a Senate Foreign Relations Committee staff report. […] Mini-nukes, the report said, are the "new generation of tactical nuclear weapons which combine low and variable yield possibilities with enhanced radiation characteristics and which could be used with artillery and laser-guided or other 'smart' bombs.""
- "The world has witnessed the first confrontation between the ‘nukes’ and the ‘non-nukes’ [i.e., countries possessing and not possessing nuclear weapons]. Although only a political one, this confrontation at the Review Conference of the Parties to the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), which took place last May in Geneva, portends serious trouble ahead."
- "‘This, er, initiator of polonium and lithium, would it be used in an anti-personnel bomb?’ he asked. ‘Oh yes, you could say so, boyo,’ replied the Welshman. ‘An initiator, you see, is what sets off a nuke.’"
- "For citizens of nuclear states, nukes are the metaphor for success and failure, the constraints for experimentation, the analogy for all other "problems." Nonetheless, these same citizens seem reluctant to take nukes so seriously."
- "I can buy nukes on the black market for $40 million each."
- "That was the apparent strategy with the hand-carried nukes, Bentley said — not to nuke Russians directly but rather nuke big holes in the Alps, so that all the resultant ash would fill up the valleys and prevent Soviet tanks and trucks from being able to pass, he said."
Etymology
Regional Pronunciation
- American English: /n(j)uk/
- British English: /njuːk/
Usage
- American usage
- Colloquial
- Canadian usage
- Transitive verb
- Obsolete
- Archaic