To Battle, To Combat
Intransitive verb and Godan verb
たたかう
第二次世界大戦で日本とアメリカは戦いました。
Japan and America fought in WWII.
わたしたちは日本語が上手くなるために、毎日このかん字というきょ大な化け物と戦っているんです。
We battle against this gigantic monster called kanji every day so we can get good at Japanese.
剣道は通常、一対一で戦う武道だが、コウイチは五年前、二人の男を同時に相手にしなくてはいけなかった。
Kendo is normally a one-on-one martial art, but 5 years ago Koichi had to fight against two guys at the same time.
This is the verb version of the vocab word 戦い, which I'm hoping you learned earlier. The verb version of course means to fight or to battle.
The reading comes from 戦い a word you've hopefully seen by now. Associate these words together in your mind and you'll be able to read them so long as you know the other one.