battery

Meanings

1. 1
   noun

   A device that stores power and is used to run electrical things.

   My phone needs a new battery because it dies so quickly.

2. 2
   noun

   The amount of stored power left in such a device.

   Her phone didn't have enough battery for another call.

3. 3
   noun

   A large set of similar things used together.

   The patients had to take a whole battery of tests.

4. 4
   noun

   The crime of physically attacking or hitting another person.

   He was charged with assault and battery after the fight.

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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