mercenary

adjective/ˈmɜrsəˌnɛri/

Frequency rank: #9,972 of 20,003 in the WORDED list (wordfreq data)

Meaning

a professional soldier hired to serve in a foreign army for pay, motivated by money rather than loyalty or ideology.

Illustration for the English word “mercenary”

Example sentence

The rebel army recruited mercenary soldiers who fought only for gold and had no loyalty to any cause.

Synonyms & related words

More words in ranks 9,901–10,000