arms race
nounDefinition of arms race
: a race between hostile nations to accumulate or develop weapons
broadly
: an ever escalating race or competition
Examples of arms race in a Sentence
Recent Examples on the Web
Iran soon entered that arms race, this time as aggressor rather than target. — Andy Greenberg, WIRED, "The WIRED Guide to Cyberwar," 23 Aug. 2019 Still, the two companies have engaged in something of a shipping arms race for years. — Kaitlyn Tiffany, Vox, "FedEx won’t deliver Amazon packages in the US anymore," 8 Aug. 2019 The country is locked in an endlessly escalating political arms race—often based on conspiracy theories—that will intensify through 2020. — David Rohde, The New Yorker, "The Competing Partisan Plot Lines of Robert Mueller’s Testimony," 24 July 2019 Western powers, fearing the development of an Iranian nuclear weapon and the Middle Eastern arms race that might follow, piled on increasingly draconian sanctions to force Iran to back down. — A.k., The Economist, "The nuclear deal fuelling tensions between Iran and America," 22 July 2019 Denver finally joined the great NBA arms race of 2019 by picking up power forward Jerami Grant from a back table at Oklahoma City’s garage sale. — Mark Kiszla, The Denver Post, "Kiszla: Nuggets need one more big piece to be legit championship contenders. His name? Bradley Beal.," 9 July 2019 With the Western Conference arms race heating up, Portland Trail Blazers President of Basketball Operations Neil Olshey isn’t content sitting on the sideline and watching rivals load up. — oregonlive.com, "Portland Trail Blazers trade for Hassan Whiteside, send Meyers Leonard to Miami Heat, Moe Harkless to LA Clippers: Report," 1 July 2019 The move comes amid an arms race among smartphone makers to make the best smartphone for gamers, with recent competitors to Samsung’s phones being the Black Shark 2 and the Asus ROG Phone II. — Jay Peters, The Verge, "Samsung is baking Discord into its phones to let you chat with friends while mobile gaming," 7 Aug. 2019 District 1: Democrats in arms race in the South Bay Nearly the antithesis of the District 2 race is the contest to replace outgoing Supervisor Greg Cox in his District 1 seat, representing the South Bay. — San Diego Union-Tribune, "Nearly $1.5 million has already poured into 2020 San Diego County supervisors races," 2 Aug. 2019These example sentences are selected automatically from various online news sources to reflect current usage of the word 'arms race.' Views expressed in the examples do not represent the opinion of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback.
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