campaign
Pluralcampaigns
Verbcampaigns, campaigning, campaigned
Pluralcampaigns
Formscampaigns, campaigning, campaigned
- 1A connected series of actions or operations carried out to achieve a particular goal.
The mayor launched a campaign to reduce homelessness across the city.
Their marketing campaigns target younger consumers through social media.
UsageYou launch or run a campaign to do something, or for or against something (a campaign against smoking).
- 2A connected series of military operations with a single objective, making up one distinct phase of a war or fought within one region.
The Gallipoli campaign ended with the withdrawal of the Allied forces.
Napoleon's campaigns in Italy made his name as a general.
UsageUsually named by its ground or its leader: the Gallipoli campaign, Napoleon's Italian campaigns.
Similaroffensive
Note
Of the meanings still in use, this is the closest to the word's roots: Latin campus, "field", gave Late Latin campania, open country and, in war, a battlefield, while Italian campagna meant both a field and a military operation. A campaign was the fighting an army did once it took the field.
- 3To take an active part in an organized effort directed at achieving a goal.
Activists campaign tirelessly for environmental protection.
She campaigned across three states ahead of the election.
UsageYou campaign for or against something (campaign for better parks), or campaign to do something; there is usually no direct object.
- 4A team or player's overall performance and efforts across a single sporting season.
United's campaign ended in disappointment after a string of late-season defeats.
She enjoyed her best campaign yet, scoring twenty goals.
Similarseason
Note
Sports writing borrows the military frame for a whole season. A team's campaign opens, stalls and ends, and a player has a campaign for the club he plays for, as in "his campaign for Hampshire." The word covers the full arc of fixtures and results rather than any single match, which is why reporters judge a campaign as a whole: strong, disappointing, or the best yet.
Checked 5 Nov 2026 · 1 fact
- Sports writing applies the military campaign metaphor to a team's series of games. repozytorium.amu.edu.pl
- 5The principal story mode of a video game, which the player works through as a sequence of linked missions or levels.
The single-player campaign runs to about fifteen missions, each ending in a boss fight.
Reviewers praised the multiplayer but called the campaign short and forgettable.
Less common meanings
- 6An ongoing series of tabletop sessions in which the same characters advance through one connected storyline.
The dungeon master spent weeks preparing the next stage of the campaign.
Their campaign branched in unexpected directions after the players betrayed an ally.
Note
Tabletop gamers use this word for the long game. The same characters carry over from session to session, so what happened last week still shapes what happens next. That continuity separates a campaign from a one-off adventure finished in a single sitting. Whoever leads the game is said to run the campaign, while the others play in it.
- 7To enter and race a horse or vehicle consistently across the events of a racing season.
Her owners plan to campaign the filly in California this winter before shipping her east for the spring stakes races.
Owners often campaign a promising horse aggressively to build its reputation.
UsageThe horse, car or yacht is the object (campaign a filly), and it is often passive: was campaigned by a top driver.
Note
Owners and drivers campaign race horses, a yacht ("he campaigned her for three years") or a car. A span of seasons often follows, because the word implies sustained racing rather than a single start.
- 8A broad expanse of open, level country largely free of considerable hills.
Note
This is the meaning closest to Latin campus, "field," the origin behind the goal-driven sense: open, level country. It is obsolete. Its twin champaign survives only as an archaic or literary word, so a modern writer simply says open country. In older prose, "a wide campaign" describes a landscape, not an organized effort.
- 9An outing or excursion taken into the countryside, typically for pleasure or recreation.
Note
Here the open country is a destination rather than a view: a trip out into the fields and orchards. Like the "open plain" meaning, it is obsolete. A reader who meets it in older writing should not hear a march or an organized drive in it. In modern English, an outing or a trip to the country does this work.
Checked 5 Nov 2026 · 2 facts
- Campaign has an obsolete sense meaning an excursion into the countryside. en.wiktionary.org
- The open-plain sense of campaign is also obsolete. en.wiktionary.org
- 10The span of time during which a blast furnace runs continuously before being shut down.
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Origin
The root is Latin campus ("field"). Late Latin turned it into campānia ("open country, battlefield"), Italian into campagna ("field, military operation"), and French into campagne, the form English took. Champagne, campania, and campagna are all doublets of it.