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Ordnance vs Munition - What's the difference?

ordnance | munition |

As nouns the difference between ordnance and munition

is that ordnance is military equipment, especially weapons and ammunition while munition is armament, weaponry.

ordnance

English

Noun

(en noun)
  • military equipment, especially weapons and ammunition.
  • artillery.

    • Usage notes

    The British , now a civilian agency, retains its name from its origin as a military topographic survey of Britain during the Napoleonic Wars. This word is often confused with ordinance, which is a law or legal statute.

    Related terms

    * unexploded ordnance

    munition

    English

    Noun

    (en noun)
  • (usually plural) Armament, weaponry.
  • * 1918 , Upton Sinclair, The Profits of Religion: An Essay in Economic Interpretation Book 7.:
    • Just as we can say that an English girl who leaves the narrow circle of her old life, and goes into a munition factory and joins a union and takes part in its debates, will never after be a docile home-slave; so we can say that the clergyman who helps in Y. M. C. A. work in France, or in Red Cross organization in America, will be less the bigot and formalist forever after.
  • (military, NATO) Bombs, rockets, missiles.
  • (rare, obsolete) A tower or fortification.
  • * 1610 , Douay-Rheims Bible, Habacuc 2:1
    • I wil stand vpon my watch, and fixe my steppe vpon the munition : and I wil behold, to see what may be sayd to me, and what I may answer to him that rebuketh me.