Battlefront

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. The area or front line where opposing armed forces engage in battle
2. A location where troops face each other and direct combat occurs during a war
3. The contested zone in a conflict where fighting takes place between armies

Etymology: "Battlefront" is a plain compound: "battle" joined to "front," with the sense of a line where opposing forces meet. The two halves have quite different routes into English. "Battle" travelled through Old French "bataille," which came from Late Latin "battalia," a word built on the Latin verb "battuere," meaning to beat or strike. "Front" comes from Latin "frontem," meaning forehead or brow, which passed into Old French as "front" and then into Middle English as "frount." The Latin sense of "frontem" is the surprising part. A forehead is the face of a person, so the word for the front of an army took its image from the front of a head, the part that faces forward. That same logic gave the military "front" its meaning long before the word was paired with "battle."

Synonyms: frontline, combat zone, warfront, front, theater of war