means A ship built and armed for combat at sea, carrying weapons and crew to fight other vessels or strike targets on land.

from A plain Germanic compound: "war" plus "ship." "War" comes from Old French "werre," itself from a Frankish root meaning confusion or strife — a cousin of the modern German "wirren," to tangle. "Ship" is solid Old English "scip," sailing unchanged through a thousand years of English. So the word is literally what it says: a vessel for the business of tangling violently with others, a meaning as old as the first oared craft that ever carried armed men toward an enemy shore.