civiliannoun [ C ]
uk/sɪˈvɪl.jən/us/səˈvɪl.jən/C2 a person who is not a member of the police or the armed forces:
The bomb killed four soldiers and three civilians.
More examples
- Bombing civilians is a crime against humanity .
- The evacuation of civilians remains out of the question while the fighting continues.
- The first fatalities of the war were civilians.
- We will be flying 100 badly wounded civilians out of the battle zone tonight.
- How many civilians died in the Vietnam War?
Thesaurus: synonyms and related words
The armed forces generally
- AWOL
- camouflage
- challenge
- deploy
- French Foreign Legion
- march
- martial
- military
- mission
- mod
- psych ops
- quick march! idiom
- recce
- reconnaissance
- regular
- sealed orders
- soldiering
- the armed forces
- the military-industrial complex
- the National Guard
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civilian
adjective ukus
The army has been criticized for attacking the unarmed civilian population.