Gunnage

noun

noun ·Rare ·Advanced level

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    The number of guns carried by a warship.

    "For being set afloat again, after swimming all night and half a day, he brought into the Portland Roads a Crappo ship of twice his tonnage, and three times his gunnage; and now his sailors were delighted, having hope of prize-money."

  2. 2
    A bounty or prize paid to the captors of an enemy ship, based on the number of guns on that enemy ship. historical

    "Now Sir, if you look back you'll find the Number of Guns exactly agree with the Gunnage here payd; and that after the passing his Accounts and deducting his own share, he gave them a Note for 300 l, which being divided as the Act directs, there is coming to the King about 84 l."

  3. 3
    The size of the guns on a warship.

    "Unlike the other delegations, the British proposed to reopen the settlements of Washington regarding capital ships and aircraft carriers by extending the accepted life of existing capital ships from twenty to twenty-six years, reducing the size of any battleship to be built in the future from 35,000 to something under 30,000 tons and their maximum gunnage from 16-inch to 13.5-inch, and reducing the maximum size of aircraft carriers from 27,000 to 25,000 tons and their maximum gunnage from 8-inch to 6-inch ."

Example

More examples

"For being set afloat again, after swimming all night and half a day, he brought into the Portland Roads a Crappo ship of twice his tonnage, and three times his gunnage; and now his sailors were delighted, having hope of prize-money."

Etymology

From gun + -age.

Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.