nuke
Americannoun
-
nukes
plural
-
a nuclear or thermonuclear weapon.
-
a nuclear power plant or nuclear reactor.
-
nuclear energy.
to convert from coal to nuke.
adjective
verb (used with object)
-
nukes,
present (3rd person singular)
-
nuked,
past participle, past
-
nuking
present participle
-
to attack, defeat, or destroy with or as if with nuclear weapons.
-
Slang. to cook or bake in a microwave oven.
verb
noun
-
a nuclear bomb
-
a military strike with nuclear weapons
-
nuclear power
-
a nuclear power plant
Other Word Forms
Inflected Forms
Nouns
Participles
Conjugated Forms
Present
-
nukesimple
-
nukessimple
-
have nukedperfect
-
has nukedperfect
-
am nukingprogressive
-
are nukingprogressive
-
is nukingprogressive
-
have been nukingperfect progressive
-
has been nukingperfect progressive
Past
-
nukedsimple
-
had nukedperfect
-
was nukingprogressive
-
were nukingprogressive
-
had been nukingperfect progressive
Future
Etymology
Origin of nuke
First recorded in 1945–50; by shortening and respelling
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
Anything short of that is merely kicking the nuke down the road.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Apr. 22, 2026
Stopping the nuke would give them more time to gather intelligence, but we learn there’s only a 61% chance of intercepting it.
From Los Angeles Times ● Oct. 9, 2025
“The implicit message is not just: ‘We could nuke Los Angeles.’
From New York Times ● Feb. 4, 2024
If that’s not interesting, maybe DHS could focus more on making sure that the Pentagon’s nuke silos and surrounding local areas are not full of hacker-friendly holes.
From Salon ● Dec. 31, 2023
A tiny amount of airborne Ebola could nuke a building full of people if it got into the air-conditioning system.
From "The Hot Zone" by Richard Preston
“There’s I believe a growing appreciation that AIs are the new nukes, you have to have them.”
From Barron's ● Jun. 5, 2026
In case of a Soviet attack, nukes dispersed in thousands of miles of cut-and-cover tunnels could be launched within 20 minutes.
From Los Angeles Times ● Feb. 6, 2026
Not only had the nukes made those ships a more tempting target, they were more trouble than they were worth, requiring specially trained crews and special security procedures.
From Slate ● Dec. 23, 2025
It’s helping the move from coal to fracked oil and natural gas to nukes.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Nov. 23, 2025
“The clans have been lobbing nukes at that sphere for the past two weeks, and they haven’t even scratched it. How are you going to get it to ‘drop on its own’?”
From "Ready Player One: A Novel" by Ernest Cline
This command to wipe out the files as fast as possible nuked “Toy Story 2” in the time it takes to play “You’ve Got a Friend in Me.”
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jun. 20, 2026
"I thought we got nuked or something," Mr Rogers told the local newspaper.
From BBC ● Oct. 3, 2025
“The extent to which America nuked itself is not completely appreciated still, to this day, by most Americans, especially younger Americans,” he said.
From New York Times ● Jul. 20, 2023
Billie Eilish has nuked “the internet” from her phone, she said Thursday, in part because she was tired of believing the things she read about herself online.
From Los Angeles Times ● Mar. 3, 2023
“If you were that hungry,” said Emma, “we should’ve just nuked a frozen cheeseburger back home.”
From "The Smartest Kid in the Universe" by Chris Grabenstein
“But I would not subscribe to the idea of nuking the Fed.”
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jun. 2, 2026
“This is insanity,” Elba’s president says after a hawkish general played by Tracy Letts makes the case for preemptively nuking America’s foes.
From Slate ● Mar. 13, 2026
His flawed hyperloop plan, for example, or nuking the Martian poles to create an atmosphere, or basically anything he’s promised about Twitter.
From Scientific American ● May 15, 2023
Players can freely control Zack in 3-D space, swinging his giant sword at a monster and dodging its attacks in between nuking it with magic spells.
From New York Times ● Dec. 6, 2022
I was still fuzzy on why nuking grapes could cause a plasma ball.
From "Sir Fig Newton and the Science of Persistence" by Sonja Thomas
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
