Helicopter
nounAn aircraft that is lifted and propelled by horizontal rotating blades, able to take off vertically and hover.
How to spell helicopter
10 letters · 4 syllables
How to pronounce helicopter
Say the part in capitals loudest.
What does helicopter mean?
- nounAn aircraft that is lifted and propelled by horizontal rotating blades, able to take off vertically and hover.
Helicopter in a sentence
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A rescue helicopter winched the stranded climbers off the cliff.
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The news crew filmed the traffic jam from a circling helicopter.
Where does helicopter come from?
Language of origin: Greek
This word comes from the Greek elements helix, meaning 'spiral' or 'twisted', and pteron, meaning 'wing'. The two were joined to describe a machine lifted by a spiralling, winglike rotor. The compound was first coined in French as helicoptere around 1861 by the inventor Gustave de Ponton d'Amecourt, decades before any practical machine existed, and English borrowed it soon after. The same pteron root for 'wing' sits inside 'pterodactyl', the winged-finger dinosaur, while helix survives in everyday words about spirals and the helix of the ear. Knowing that the word truly divides as helico plus pter, rather than the casual 'heli' plus 'copter' that people imagine, explains the often-overlooked second 'i' in the middle.
How the word is built
- helico- (from Greek helix, helikos: spiral)
- pter (from pteron: wing)
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