Jet

How to spell jet

3 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce jet

What does jet mean?

1. nounAn aircraft powered by one or more jet engines.
2. nounA fast, narrow stream of liquid or gas forced out under pressure.
3. nounA hard black mineral that can be polished and used in jewellery.

Jet in a sentence

• The private jet landed at a small regional airport.

• A jet of water shot from the burst pipe across the kitchen.

• The Victorian mourning brooch was carved from polished jet.

• Passengers boarded the jet for the overnight flight to Tokyo.

• The fountain sent a thin jet high into the evening air.

• Her hair was so dark it shone like jet in the lamplight.

Where does jet come from?

Language of origin: French

The aircraft and fluid senses come from the Old French verb jeter, meaning 'to throw' or 'to shoot out', which itself descends from the Latin iactare, 'to toss or hurl about', a frequentative of iacere, 'to throw'. English took the word in the 1500s to describe a forceful stream of liquid or gas spurting out, and in the twentieth century the jet engine and the jet aircraft were named for exactly that shooting stream of exhaust. The gemstone sense has a completely different root: it comes from the Greek place name Gagai, a town in Lycia famous for its black lignite, which passed through Latin gagates and Old French jaiet into English. That is why deep glossy black is still called jet-black today. The same throwing root also gave English 'jetty', a structure thrown out into the water, and 'eject'.

How the word is built

• jet (from Old French jeter: to throw or shoot out)