battery

Meanings

1. 1
   noun

   a collection of related things intended for use together

   took a battery of achievement tests

2. 2
   noun

   A device used to power electric devices, consisting of one or more electrically connected electrochemical cells or (archaically) electrostatic cells.

   alkaline battery

3. 3
   noun

   The energy stored in such a device.

   Her phone did not have enough battery for another phone call.

4. 4
   noun

   The infliction of unlawful physical violence on a person, legally distinguished from assault, which involves the threat of impending violence.

   Holonym: assault and battery

5. 5
   noun

   A coordinated group of artillery weapons, with any of various numbers of guns.

   Outside the ancient fort, you can still see worn areas in the stone where the batteries were once placed.

6. 6
   noun

   An elevated platform on which cannon could be placed.

   The construction of advanced batteries mirrored that of those built along the line of circumvallation. [...] Although Mahan demanded that batteries be constructed to exacting dimensions and revetted with gabions, fascines, and sandbags, at Vicksburg the resources at hand determined what materials soldiers used to build what they termed artillery "forts".

7. 7
   noun

   An array of similar things.

   Schoolchildren take a battery of standard tests to measure their progress.

8. 8
   noun

   A set of small cages where hens are kept for the purpose of farming their eggs.

   ‘Do you know how battery chickens live?’

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.