Airfield

How to spell airfield

8 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce airfield

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does airfield mean?

1. nounAn area of open ground equipped for aircraft to take off, land, and be maintained, usually smaller than a major airport.

Airfield in a sentence

• The small airfield outside town has a single grass runway.

• Fog grounded every flight at the military airfield that morning.

Where does airfield come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This is a transparent English compound, joining 'air' and 'field', both of which are old and well established words. 'Air' came into English in the 1200s from Old French 'air', which traces back to the Latin 'aer' and ultimately the Greek 'aer', meaning the lower atmosphere or the breath we draw. 'Field' is a native Germanic word from Old English 'feld', meaning open country or cleared ground suitable for grazing or planting. The two were welded together in the early twentieth century, when aviation created a need for a name for the flat, open expanse used by aircraft to take off and land. The term gained wide currency during the two world wars, when temporary landing grounds sprang up across the countryside, and it sits alongside cousins like 'airport' and 'airstrip'.

How the word is built

• air (open atmosphere, the sky)
• field (open piece of ground)