"battleship," literally "fearing nothing," from dread, v. + nought, n.. Mentioned as the name of a ship in the Royal Navy c.1596, but modern sense is from the name of the first of a new class of British battleships, based on the "all big-gun" principle (armed with 10 big guns rather than 4 large guns and a battery of smaller ones), launched Feb. 18, 1906.