battle

n.

1. An armed encounter

   engagement, fight, action, skirmish, encounter, contest, clash, brush, sortie, pitched battle, battle royal, confrontation, significant contact; see also sense 2, fight 1.

   Famous battles include: Marathon, Salamis, Thermopylae, Syracuse, Plataea, Lake Trasimenus, Cannae, Pharsalus, Philippi, Actium, Hastings, Agincourt, St Albans, Tewkesbury, Bosworth Field, Blenheim, Marston Moor, Culloden Moor, Fontenoy, Austerlitz, Waterloo, Trafalgar, Solferino, Balaklava, Borodino, Sadowa, Plassey, Bunker Hill, Yorktown, New Orleans, First Bull Run (Manassas), Shiloh, Gettysburg, Vicksburg, Mukden, Jutland, First and Second Marne, First and Second Ypres, the Somme, Verdun, Chateau-Thierry, Saint-Mihiel, Meuse, Argonne, Battle of France, Battle of Britain, Siege of Leningrad, Stalingrad, Midway, El Alamein, Guadalcanal, Normandy, Battle of the Bulge, Okinawa, Battle of the Philippine Sea, Leyte Gulf, Iwo Jima, Inchon, Seoul, Chosin Reservoir, Heartbreak Ridge, Pork Chop Hill, Dienbienphu, Tet Offensive.

2. The progress of a battle, sense 1

   combat, fighting, action, strife, contention, struggle, hostilities, campaign, bombing, bloodshed, clash, onslaught, exchange of blows, onset, barrage, conflict, affray, warfare, fray, assault, human sea, press, crusade, pincer, havoc, carnage, ravage, rage of battle, blitz, blitzkrieg, retreat, tactical retreat, maneuver.

3. Any fight or struggle

   conflict, struggle, contest, contention; see dispute, fight 1.

battle denotes a conflict between armed forces in a war and implies a large-scale, prolonged contest over a particular area; engagement, a more formal term, stresses the actual meeting of opposing forces, with no restrictive connotation as to duration; a campaign is a series of military operations with a particular objective and may involve a number of battles; encounter usually suggests a chance meeting of hostile forces; skirmish refers to a brief encounter between small detachments; action stresses engagement in active fighting killed in action; combat, the most general of these terms, simply implies armed fighting, without further qualification

give<strong> <em>or</em> </strong>do battle<strong>