Meaning & use
war materials
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Meaning
nounplural
Goods and equipment used to fight a war, such as weapons, ammunition, vehicles, and fuel.
Grammar: Always plural in form and takes a plural verb: 'War materials are stored here.'
Patterns
- supply war materials
- ship war materials
- war materials to a country
The factory was converted to produce war materials during the conflict.
Trucks carried war materials to the front line under cover of darkness.
International law restricts the sale of war materials to certain regimes.
Common combinations
- supply war materials
- The allies agreed to supply war materials to the resistance.
- war materials factory
- The old war materials factory now makes farm machinery.
- shipment of war materials
- Customs officers intercepted a shipment of war materials.
- production of war materials
- The production of war materials increased sharply that year.
Synonyms and how they differ
- arms
- Arms usually means weapons only, while war materials also includes fuel, vehicles, and other supplies.
- munitions
- Munitions refers specifically to weapons and ammunition, not to the broader range of military goods.
- materiel
- Materiel is a formal military term for equipment and supplies; it is spelled differently from 'material' and is less common.
Word family
- war material noun
- The singular form, used when talking about one type of supply or in a general sense.
Commonly confused: war materials or war materiel?
war materials vs war materiel
Materiel (with -el) is a military term for equipment and supplies; materials (with -als) is the more general everyday word.
Practice
The government decided to ________ war materials to its allies.
Choose one answer.
After 'to' in an infinitive, the base form 'supply' is correct. 'Supplies' is a third-person singular verb or a noun, 'supplying' is a gerund, and 'supplied' is past tense, none of which fit after 'to' here.
Make it your own
Write a sentence using “war materials”, then check it and compare it with the examples above.