Dictionary

superwarhead en · NOUN

Etymology

From super- + warhead.

Meanings

1. (rare) An extremely destructive and powerful warhead.
   • A thousand times more powerful than the A-bomb that destroyed Nagasaki, this superwarhead would be capable of imposing great blast or overpressure on a very large area. 1970, Ralph E. Lapp, Arms Beyond Doubt: The Tyranny of Weapons Technology, Cowles Book Company, →ISBN, page 59:
   • And he said the Russians would need a "superwarhead" on their own minuteman-type weapon in order to be successful. 1961, Associated Press Clippings File Europe Disorders 1961-09-01, Press Association Inc., page 2:
   • Approval for its development may have been facilitated by Khrushchev’s interest in large-yield "terror weapons," for whose delivery the SS-9 was ideally suited. (Khrushchev boasted publicly about the Soviet possession of such weapons and the atmospheric thermonuclear test series conducted in August-September 1961 included the explosion of a superwarhead with a yield of approximately 50 megatons.) 1977, The Military in Contemporary Soviet Politics: An Institutional Analysis, Praeger, →ISBN, page 190:
   • However, every smaller terrorist state has its own superwarheads, happily sold to them by the big powers' armament industries. The problem of the deterrent has merely been displaced to the irresponsible and the fanatical. 1990, Christine Brooke-Rose, Verbivore, Carcanet, →ISBN, →LCCN, →OCLC, page 47:

Forms