commerce destroyer

English

Noun

commerce destroyer (plural commerce destroyers)

1. (military, nautical, dated) A fast, unarmoured, lightly armed naval vessel designed to capture or destroy merchant vessels of an enemy.

Part or all of this entry has been imported from the 1913 edition of Webster’s Dictionary, which is now free of copyright and hence in the public domain. The imported definitions may be significantly out of date, and any more recent senses may be completely missing.
(See the entry for “commerce destroyer”, in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913, →OCLC.)