Airline

How to spell airline

7 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce airline

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does airline mean?

1. nounA company that provides regular passenger or cargo flights along set routes.

Airline in a sentence

• The airline cancelled every flight during the storm.

• She booked the cheapest airline for the trip to Lisbon.

Where does airline come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This is a transparent English compound formed from 'air' and 'line', both of which are very old words in the language. 'Air' came into Middle English from the Old French 'air', which traced back to the Latin 'aer' and ultimately the Greek 'aer', meaning the lower atmosphere or the breath we draw. 'Line' descends from the Latin 'linea', literally a 'linen thread' and so a straight stretched cord, which gave the sense of a route or a series of points. The word 'line' had long been used for transport companies running along a fixed route, as in a shipping line or a railway line, so when commercial flight began in the early twentieth century the natural label was 'airline', a passenger service following routes through the air. The spelling is simply the two words joined, with no hidden letters, which is why the only real trap is remembering it is written as one solid word rather than two.

How the word is built

• air (the sky/atmosphere)
• line (a route or company operating along a route)