tactical

Pluraltacticals

1. 1
   adjective

   Relating to tactics: the specific methods and moves used to achieve an immediate goal.

   The campaign team adjusted its tactical approach after the early polls.

   His tactical instincts in close debate often won over the audience.

   Note

   The broad sense, built simply from tactic plus -al, is at home well beyond the battlefield, and sports writing leans on it constantly. Phil McNulty's 2012 BBC Sport report credits England's win over Belgium to "tactical discipline". Where the military meaning sets tactical against strategic as a matter of scale, this sense simply means having to do with method, in any contest.

2. 2
   adjective

   Relating to military operations that are smaller or more local in scope than overarching strategic ones.

   The general praised the unit's tactical maneuvers during the river crossing.

   Air forces distinguish tactical strikes on local targets from strategic bombing of an enemy's industrial base.

   Oppositestrategic

   Note

   Here the word marks one end of a military scale, with strategic at the other. Its best-known compound is tactical nuclear weapon. The label sorts the weapon by the kind of operation it serves, which is local and battlefield-sized, rather than by anything in the bomb itself. The pairing works by contrast, so the two adjectives are best understood together.

3. 3
   adjective

   Showing skill, cleverness, or ingenuity in handling a situation.

   Their tactical use of social media turned a small brand into a household name.

   She gave a tactical answer that satisfied both sides without committing to either.

   Similarshrewd, clever, astute, adroit

   Oppositeclumsy, inept

4. 4
   adjective

   With a military look that commonly comes from black coloring or added features such as a bipod, an adjustable stock, or a detachable magazine.

   The rifle's tactical styling included a bipod and a matte-black finish.

   Many tactical accessories add a military look without improving performance.

   Note

   A firearms word about appearance, not function. A rifle is called tactical here because it looks military-issue, with a bipod, an adjustable stock, a detachable magazine or a black finish. It does not mean the rifle serves small-scale military operations. Because the adjective describes styling, it promises nothing about how well a weapon or accessory actually performs.

5. 5
   nouncountable

   A privately organized war reenactment event built around mock battles or skirmishes.

   Organizers planned the tactical around a series of staged skirmishes.

   Dozens of enthusiasts signed up for the weekend tactical at the old quarry.

6. 6
   nouncountable

   In formal proof systems, a higher-order operation that combines individual proof tactics into a compound one.

   The library provides a tactical that applies each subgoal tactic in sequence.

   By composing a custom tactical, he automated the repetitive parts of the proof.

   Note

   A noun from interactive theorem proving. There, a tactic is a single proof step, and a tactical builds new tactics out of existing ones. Adam Chlipala's Certified Programming with Dependent Types (2013) also calls it a tactic combinator and uses repeat as the model case. Repeat t runs t, then runs t again on every subgoal it generates, working its way down through their subgoals in turn.

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