airplane

 

• aeroplane, aëroplane (Ireland, South Africa, UK)

Alteration of aeroplane (Borrowed from French aéroplane, from Ancient Greek ἀερόπλανος (aeróplanos, “wandering in air”), from ἀήρ (aḗr, “air”) + πλάνος (plános, “wandering”). First used by Joseph Pline in an 1855 patent.[1];[2])

• enPR: ârʹplān', IPA^(key): /ˈeɹˌpleɪ̯n/, /ˈɛːˌpleɪ̯n/
• (Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /ˈɛəˌpleɪ̯n/
• (US) IPA^(key): /ˈɛɚˌpleɪ̯n/

• Audio (US):

  (file)

• Hyphenation: air‧plane
• Rhymes: -ɛə(ɹ)pleɪn

airplane (plural airplanes)

1. (chiefly US, Canada, Philippines, Australia, New Zealand) A powered heavier-than-air aircraft with fixed wings.

   Hypernym: aircraft

2. (chiefly US, Canada, Philippines, Australia, New Zealand) A game to encourage small children to eat, in which the parent or carer pretends a spoonful of food is an aircraft flying into the child's mouth.
   • 1988, Matthew Linn, Sheila Fabricant, Dennis Linn, Healing the Eight Stages of Life, Paulist Press, →ISBN, page 66:

     So, he'd take a spoon and he'd start playing airplane, circling the spoon around in the air until it was ready to land in the runway of my mouth.

   • 1997 03, Maria Flook, Open Water, Ecco Press, →ISBN:

     Willis wondered what this fellow wanted to do, spoon feed him? Play airplane?

   • 2013 May 13, Theo L. Dorpat, Michael L. Miller, Clinical Interaction and the Analysis of Meaning: A New Psychoanalytic Theory, Routledge, →ISBN:

     For instance, Jan has taken to playing airplane with the spoon to get Charley to attend to the spoon and want to take it into his mouth.

airplane (third-person singular simple present airplanes, present participle airplaning, simple past and past participle airplaned)

1. (intransitive) To fly in an aeroplane.
2. (transitive) To transport by aeroplane.

• aircraft
• flycraft
• glider
• helicopter

• “airplane”, in OneLook Dictionary Search.
• “airplane, n.”, in Lexico, Dictionary.com; Oxford University Press, 2019–2022.

• perianal