noun ·Rare ·Advanced level

Definitions

Noun

1. 1
   A weapon that fires a beam of extremely high temperature.

   "Near-synonyms: ray-gun, ray gun, death ray, energy weapon"

2. 2
   Synonym of calorific ray. dated

Synonyms

All synonyms

calorific raydeath rayenergy weaponray gunray-gun

Example

More examples

"Near-synonyms: ray-gun, ray gun, death ray, energy weapon"

Etymology

The fictional sense was coined by British science fiction author H. G. Wells in 1896 in The War of the Worlds.

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