armada

noun ar·ma·da \ är-ˈmä-də , -ˈmā- also -ˈma- \

Updated on: 10 Apr 2018

Definition of armada

1 : a fleet of warships

2 : a large force or group usually of moving things

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Examples of armada in a Sentence

an armada of fishing boats
an armada of ships sailing up the coast

Recent Examples of armada from the Web

That’s enough to justify the voyage of SF Motors, the latest entrant into a growing armada of automakers whose founders or backers either hail from or are based in China.

— alex davies, WIRED, "SF Motors Brings the Latest Electric SUV to Challenge Tesla," 28 Mar. 2018
The Chronicle put its entire staff to work yesterday running down these reports, and is happy to say that there is not a lick of truth in them: The ... armada of 12 aircraft carriers and 87 warships was lying at anchor a mile off the Farallones.

— johnny miller, San Francisco Chronicle, "US ports closed to honor MLK," 28 Mar. 2018
The military forces behind Operation MO included an armada of destroyers, cruisers, aircraft carriers and submarines.

— kristine phillips, Washington Post, "A WWII aircraft carrier was lost in the battle for Australia. A tech billionaire just found it.," 6 Mar. 2018
Within this empowered armada there also exists smaller factions that oversee more specific projects.

— jennifer lance, Glamour, "Here's Why You Won't Be Seeing a Time's Up Protest on the Oscars Red Carpet," 3 Mar. 2018
Almost every Mobile Mardi Gras parade is closely trailed by a city cleanup crew, an armada of water sprayers, street sweepers, dump trucks and workers with leaf blowers.

— lawrence specker, AL.com, "Beads in the water: Cleanup aims to ease Mobile's Mardi Gras litter problem," 4 Feb. 2018
People are just gonna pick the news they like the most, regardless of whether or not that news consists of Alex Jones telling you that the globalists have created an armada of android bot flies to invade the president’s brain.

— drew magary, GQ, ""Did You Have a Good Day Online?"," 26 Jan. 2018
At that point, Los Angeles already ranked first of all cities in America in production of aircraft, and the city’s San Pedro Bay housed an enormous naval armada.

— lorraine boissoneault, Smithsonian, "The Great Los Angeles Air Raid Terrified Citizens—Even Though No Bombs Were Dropped," 19 Jan. 2018
By and large, Canon handled this seamlessly, thanks to an armada of servers who had bussers shadowing them closely.

— kate washington, sacbee, "Dining review: Unpretentious and exceptional, East Sacramento’s Canon is an ‘instant classic’ | The Sacramento Bee," 12 Jan. 2018

These example sentences are selected automatically from various online news sources to reflect current usage of the word 'armada.' Views expressed in the examples do not represent the opinion of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback.

Did You Know?

A Spanish word that originally meant simply "armed", armada is now used in Spanish-speaking nations as the name of their national navies. In English, the word usually has historical overtones. The Great Armada of 1588 was a 120-ship fleet sent by Philip II of Spain in an attempt to invade Elizabethan England; it was defeated when British forces lit eight ships afire and sent them sailing into the Armada's midst, then blocked the passage to the south so that the remaining ships were forced to sail northward around Britain in order to return home, causing dozens more ships to be wrecked in the stormy northern seas. Today we sometimes use the word humorously for fleets of fishing boats, rowboats, or canoes.