An armistice is an agreement to stop war. It is not necessarily the end of a war, it just gives a breathing space to negotiate a lasting peace. The word comes from the Latin arma, meaning weapons and statium, meaning a stopping.

An armistice is different from a truce or ceasefire, because they are just temporary pauses for an agreed period of time. A truce often occurs before an armistice. An armistice is not the same as a peace treaty, which may take months or even years to agree on. It took a year to agree a peace treaty after the armistice at the end of the First World War. The 1953 Korean War Armistice has never been followed by a peace treaty, so the North and South Koreans are still at war - as we often find out in the news.