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googled naval definitions.
Warship Types
# Battleship (BB):
Historically, the final arbiter of sea power. Descended from "battle ship of the line," which were the largest and most heavily gunned sailing warships (ex: H.M.S. Victory). After the end of the age of sail, the most heavily armed and protected warships were just called "battleships."
After the advent of H.M.S. Dreadnought, battleships were also called, generically, "dreadnoughts." (See below under Miscellaneous Terms for more about the Dreadnought.) This term basically just means a battleship armed with one size of big gun.
Battleships also carry the heaviest armor of all warships, generally intended to protect them from guns of the approximate size they themselves carried.
It was expected that in war, battleships would endeavor to meet their enemy in the sort of battle where one battle line would steam parallel to the enemy battle line and they would shoot it out until one battle line was sunk. This practically never happened (Tsushima and Jutland being the two times I can think of when it did, except that the Germans fled at Jutland and the battle was indecisive).
In WW II, BB's seldom fought each other, and in much smaller engagements when they did, usually just one or two battleships at a time. By then what is now called the 3rd generation of battleships were known as "fast battleships." (Dreadnought, and battleships like her armed with all 11" or 12" guns represented the first generation. The 2nd generation were the super Dreadnoughts with 13.5" to 16" guns, but speed still limited to the range of 20-24 knots.)
With the fast battleship, the battlecruiser and battleship types had merged. Battle line speeds were now 27 to 30 knots, about as fast as destroyers and cruisers could travel in a seaway. The battlecruiser H.M.S. Hood was really the precursor to all the fast battleships that followed. Improvement in power plants and the increase in size made high speed and heavy armor possible in the same ship. By treaty, the 3rd generation battleships built just before WW II were about 35,000 tons displacement. Read the introduction to my essay about the Treaty Battleships for more on this subject.
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Battlecruiser (CC):
The rather rigid sort of battle as envisioned for the battle line led to the development of the battlecruiser. Battlecruisers, along with battleships, are classed as "capital ships." The battlecruiser was a ship about as large as a battleship and with battleship size guns, but protected against cruiser (6" or 8") gunfire, not against battleship gunfire. In the first and second generation ships, the weight that would have been devoted to additional armor was instead devoted to additional propulsion machinery. This allowed cruiser speeds (26 to 30 knots).
Since the battlecruiser could outshoot cruisers, it could sink enemy scout cruisers, and brush aside enemy cruiser screens to scout the enemy fleet's disposition. Of course, this only applied as long as the enemy did not also have battlecruisers. Since both sides built the type, they evolved toward the fast battleship. Protection against the enemy battlecruiser's big guns became important. This was driven home to the British in WW I at the Battle of Jutland, where they lost 3 CC's to enemy gunfire, which hastened the development of H.M.S. Hood. Hood was the first CC to carry the same thickness of armor as contemporary battleships. In order to combine heavy armor with high speed (given the efficiency of steam turbines at the time she was designed--during WW I), she was about 10,000 tons bigger than contemporary battleships (31,000t vs. 41,000 tons).
Only Russia operates modern, guided missile equipped battlecruisers today. Read the introduction to my essay about battlecruisers for more information about these fascinating ships.
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Large cruiser (CB), super cruiser, pocket battleship:
All terms used for ships that were basically battlecruisers, built at a time when it was politically incorrect to build battlecruisers. After the loss of three lightly armored battlecruisers at Jutland, the type came into serious question. Yet the need for the type still existed. So navies found other names for the type, names for which politicians would appropriate money. The smallest were the German "pocket battleships" (more properly "pocket battlecruisers") at about 13,000 tons (11 in. guns), and the biggest about 30,000 tons (12 " to 14" guns). Again, read my essay "Battlecruisers, Large Cruisers . . . ."
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Cruiser (C):
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