Aircraft

How to spell aircraft

8 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce aircraft

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does aircraft mean?

1. nounA machine capable of flight, such as an aeroplane, helicopter, or glider.

Aircraft in a sentence

• The airline grounded every aircraft after the safety alert.

• A military aircraft flew low over the coastal town.

Where does aircraft come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This word is a relatively modern English compound, joining the ancient native word 'air' with the equally old word 'craft'. The 'air' element traces back through Old French and Latin aer to the Greek aer, meaning the lower atmosphere we breathe and move through. The 'craft' element comes from Old English craeft, which originally meant strength, skill, or power, and later came to mean a trade or, by extension, a vessel built by skilled hands (as in 'watercraft'). When humans began to fly in the early twentieth century, 'aircraft' was coined on that established pattern to mean any machine capable of flight. Notably, the word stays the same whether it refers to one machine or many, just like 'sheep' or 'craft' itself, so there is no separate plural form to spell.

How the word is built

• air (the atmosphere/sky)
• craft (a vessel or vehicle)