arms race

noun

: a race between hostile nations to accumulate or develop weapons

broadly : an ever escalating race or competition

Examples of arms race in a Sentence

Recent Examples on the Web

Building team headquarters and training facilities have become another step in the NFL’s arms race as franchises look for every advantage to improve player performance on the field — whether that’s through recruiting free agents, or just having better facilities. —Jonathan M. Alexander, Houston Chronicle, 12 Feb. 2026

This concept was reinforced by hyperscalers racing to build ever-large frontier models, creating an arms race that drove breakthroughs but also unsustainable compute demands and rising infrastructure costs. —Abhas Ricky, Fortune, 10 Feb. 2026

This was the last formal limitation on a new nuclear arms race. —Arthur I. Cyr, Chicago Tribune, 10 Feb. 2026

This is a lot to ask of a feral brigade of extremely bright, wealthy, and sleepless twentysomethings dispatched to the front lines of an arms race that their bosses started. —Gideon Lewis-Kraus, New Yorker, 9 Feb. 2026

Word History

First Known Use

1921, in the meaning defined above

Rhymes for arms race

• abase
• airspace
• apace
• backspace
• biface
• birthplace
• blackface
• boldface
• bookcase
• braincase
• briefcase
• carcase