ordnance

Etymology

It is inherited from Middle English ordnaunce, a shortened variant of ordinaunce,^[2][3][4][5] borrowed from Old French ordenance,^[6][7] from Medieval Latin ōrdinantia, from ōrdināns, the present participle of ōrdinō (“to put in order, ordain”), from ōrdō (“row, rank, order”).^[2][5] It was originally the same word as ordinance, and the shorter spelling became fixed in the military senses;^[8][5][9] Johnson (1755) noted that it was formerly often written ordinance but that ordnance was used to keep the two apart.^[10] The OED compares the Latin noun's use in a phrase for military equipment, recorded in 1460 in a British source.^[8]

Earliest recorded meaning

Military materials, stores or supplies: before 1393, in Gower's Confessio Amantis.^[8] Barnhart dates ordinaunce in this sense to about 1390, in Chaucer's Canterbury Tales,^[4] a passage the MED also cites but which the OED reads as meaning "governance".^[8]

Semantic evolution

Ordinance had earlier meant arrangement in ranks, especially in battle order, and then the provisions of war;^[5][11] from these came the senses "engines for discharging missiles" (early 15th century) and "the branch concerned with military stores" (late 15th century).^[5] In the earliest use the engines were catapults, slings and bows; later the word meant mounted guns and cannon,^[8] and a single gun could be called an ordnance from about 1450 to 1629.^[8] The government office for military stores appears in the Rolls of Parliament in 1485.^[8] Weekley notes that the Board of Ordnance was set up under Henry VIII.^[9] Barnhart and Etymonline date the contracted form in the sense "cannon, artillery" to the 1540s,^[4][5] and Etymonline says the shorter word was established in these senses by the 17th century.^[5] Skeat thought the word first referred to the bore or size of a cannon and then to the cannon itself.^[12] The Ordnance Survey (1833), the official mapping of Great Britain and Ireland, was named after the Master-General of the Ordnance, under whom it was carried out.^[5][9]

Timeline

• before 1393 – military materials or supplies.^[8]
• before 1450 – engines or guns for discharging missiles; artillery.^[8]
• c. 1450 – a single large gun (obsolete by 1629).^[8]
• 1485 – the government office for military stores.^[8]
• 1531 – verb, to equip with artillery (obsolete by 1548).^[8]
• before 1548 – the shortened form ordnance for cannon.^[4]
• 1665 – the artillery as a branch of the army (obsolete by 1783).^[8]
• 1833 – the Ordnance Survey.^[5]

Meanings

Noun

1. Military supplies, including weapons, ammunition and combat vehicles, and the equipment for maintaining them.^[7][13][8]
2. Heavy guns; cannon or artillery.^[13][8][6]
3. Bombs, missiles and other explosive weapons: Divers cleared unexploded ordnance from the harbour.^[8][7]
4. The department of an army or government in charge of military supplies.^[13][7][8]

Related words

• ordinance
• order
• ordain
• ordonnance

References

1. ^ Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (online 2024), 5th ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
3. ^ Kurath, Hans; Kuhn, Sherman M.; Lewis, Robert E., eds. (1952–2001), Middle English Dictionary, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press; online edition ed. Frances McSparran et al. (2000–2018)
4. ^ a b c d Barnhart, Robert K. (1988), The Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology
5. ^ a b c d e f g h i Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
6. ^ a b Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
7. ^ a b c d Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
8. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
9. ^ a b c Weekley, Ernest (1921), An Etymological Dictionary of Modern English, London: John Murray
10. ^ Johnson, Samuel (1755), A Dictionary of the English Language, London; 4th ed. 1773; Johnson's Dictionary Online, ed. Beth Rapp Young et al.
11. ^ Klein, Ernest. A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the English Language. 2 vols. Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1966–1967.
12. ^ Skeat, Walter W. (1911), A Concise Etymological Dictionary of the English Language, new ed., Oxford: Clarendon Press
13. ^ a b c Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins