Meaning
Of or suited to war - soldierly, warlike, connected with the armed forces. From martial law to martial arts, the word covers everything the war god's name has touched, praising discipline in some uses and menace in others. Neutral to approving of soldierly order; in martial law and court martial the phrase-fossils keep older grammar (plural courts martial). The month of March is his. Regional use: General English; Roman origin.
Origin
Latin Martialis, of Mars - the Roman god who, unlike his disliked Greek counterpart Ares, embodied military power as the way to secure peace, fathered Romulus, and shared festivals in March and October around the campaign year; his spear in the Regia was said to tremble at coming danger, and the Campus Martius, Rome's Field of Mars, trained the city's youth. English took the adjective through Middle French: Shakespeare's Hamlet passed through the watch with Marshall stalke, the Petition of Right of 1628 appealed against commissions proceeding according to the justice of martiall lawe, and Dryden and Defoe kept it in uniform through the century. The obsolete senses preserve whole world-pictures - astrology's martial man, full-faced with a lively high colour; medicine's martial waters, iron-bearing and restorative; and even Chapman's martial planet, red in the sky.
Research Sources
References used to check this entry’s meaning, history, or documented forms.
Variants
- court martial
- martial arts
- martial law
Usage Examples
- The colonel's martial bearing of long service survived even the memo about car park allocation.
- Declaring martial law, the governor discovered, proved much easier than undeclaring it afterward.
- She runs the accounts department with a martial discipline in the field last seen at Austerlitz.