Aerospace

How to spell aerospace

9 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce aerospace

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does aerospace mean?

1. nounThe branch of technology and industry concerned with both flight within the atmosphere and travel into outer space.

Aerospace in a sentence

• After graduating she took a job in the aerospace sector designing jet engines.

• The company invested heavily in aerospace research to win government contracts.

Where does aerospace come from?

Language of origin: Greek

This is a modern compound, coined in the United States in the early 1950s as the aviation industry pushed beyond the atmosphere and into the beginnings of spaceflight. The first element, aero-, comes from the Greek aēr, meaning simply 'air', the same root that gives us 'aeroplane' and 'aerobic'. The second element, space, descends from the Latin spatium, meaning an open expanse or stretch, which reached English through Old French. The word was created to name a single continuous region running from the air close to the ground all the way out into outer space, and by extension the engineering industry that operates there. Its tidy fusion of a Greek air root with a Latin space root is a neat reminder that the troublesome part of the spelling is the 'aero' opening, which keeps the older, fuller spelling of air rather than the bare letters of the American 'aero'.

How the word is built

• aero- (air, from Greek aēr)
• space (from Latin spatium, an open expanse)