biowarfare

noun

bio·​war·​fare ˌbī-ō-ˈwȯr-ˌfer How to pronounce biowarfare (audio)

Examples of biowarfare in a Sentence

Recent Examples on the Web In the United States, meanwhile, a China expert suggested that the virus was linked to China’s biowarfare program. Yanzhong Huang, Foreign Affairs, 5 Mar. 2020 The country had been on the receiving end of germ warfare, on the part of the Imperial Japanese Army’s biowarfare Unit 731 during World War II. Yanzhong Huang, Foreign Affairs, 5 Mar. 2020 Researchers determined that the SARS-CoV-2 virus emerged from horseshoe bats rather than a biowarfare lab, and generally agreed that pangolins, rather than snakes, were the likely intermediary carriers, although some support was voiced for turtles. Rafil Kroll-Zaidi, Harper's Magazine, 25 May 2020 These are core military functions, particularly in terms of biowarfare and biodefense. James Stavridis, Time, 23 Mar. 2020 Nevertheless, in the nineteen-nineties, American policymakers began to grow increasingly worried about biowarfare. Elisabeth Eaves, The New Yorker, 18 Mar. 2020 But the modern era of biowarfare didn’t begin until the late nineteenth century, when scientists came to understand that microbes cause disease. Elisabeth Eaves, The New Yorker, 18 Mar. 2020 The biowarfare resistance touted in the Model X SUV was weird enough—though probably more useful in some cases—but this is a pretty dystopian flex, to be honest. Eric Adams, Popular Mechanics, 22 Nov. 2019 Gottlieb, an enthusiast for biowarfare (though also a kind of proto-hippie who apparently made his own goat’s-milk yogurt), was eager to manufacture mind-manipulating toxins. Adam Gopnik, The New Yorker, 26 Aug. 2019

These examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'biowarfare.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

Word History

First Known Use

1951, in the meaning defined above

Time Traveler
The first known use of biowarfare was in 1951

Dictionary Entries Near biowarfare

Cite this Entry

“Biowarfare.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/biowarfare. Accessed 18 Mar. 2024.

Medical Definition

biowarfare

noun
bio·​war·​fare
ˌbī-ō-ˈwȯr-ˌfer
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