battery

Reading level: hard

Estimated CEFR level: B1 — Intermediate

Estimated from word frequency; not an official CEFR classification.

Definition

  1. noun group of guns or missile launchers operated together at one place
  2. noun a device that produces electricity; may have several primary or secondary cells arranged in parallel or series
  3. noun a collection of related things intended for use together

Etymology

Borrowed from Middle French batterie, from Old French baterie (“action of beating”), from batre (“beat”), from Latin battuō (“beat”), from Gaulish. Doublet of batterie. By surface analysis, batter + -y. The electrical sense was coined by American polymath Benjamin Franklin by analogy with a military battery that his series of Leyden jars resembled.

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