Science & TechnologyGreek → English
Aeroplane
/ˈɛərəpleɪn/noun
A powered fixed-wing aircraft.
The Greek roots
ἀήρ
aḗr
air, mist
Literally: “air-surface”
Follow a root:ἀήρ15 words
The story of the word
Only the first half is Greek; -plane is Latin planum, a flat surface, and originally named the wing rather than the machine. French engineers coined aéroplane in the 1850s, decades before anything with that name left the ground, and English took it whole. Americans reshaped it into airplane in the 1900s, translating the Greek half and leaving the Latin one alone.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → French coinage → English
- First recorded
- 19th century
The same roots elsewhere
Other languages reached for exactly the same Greek pieces.
Same family
aerodromeaerosolaerobicair
In a sentence
The aeroplane banked hard over the estuary and lined up for the runway.