Airport

How to spell airport

7 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce airport

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does airport mean?

1. nounA complex of runways and buildings where aircraft take off, land, and handle passengers and freight.

Airport in a sentence

• We arrived at the airport three hours before the flight.

• The new airport terminal can handle twice as many passengers.

Where does airport come from?

Language of origin: Latin

Airport is a transparent twentieth-century compound, joining the everyday word 'air' with 'port'. The 'air' element is native, descending from Old English through French and ultimately from the Latin and Greek words for the breathable atmosphere. 'Port' comes from the Latin portus, meaning a harbour or a place where ships could safely enter and unload, so the older 'seaport' already named a gateway for travel and trade. When commercial aviation began in earnest in the early 1900s, English simply reused that harbour idea for aircraft, and 'airport' is recorded from around 1919 as the place where planes arrive and depart. Because both halves are familiar and spelled exactly as they sound, the word holds no real spelling surprises.

How the word is built

• air (open sky)
• port (harbour, place of entry, from Latin portus)