Parachute

How to spell parachute

9 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce parachute

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does parachute mean?

1. nounA folding canopy of fabric that slows a person or object descending through the air.
2. verbTo drop or descend through the air using such a canopy.

Parachute in a sentence

• noun

  The parachute opened cleanly just seconds after she left the aircraft.

• verb

  The relief team planned to parachute into the flooded valley at first light.

• noun

  He repacked the parachute carefully before the next training jump.

• verb

  Engineers decided to parachute the supply crates onto the remote ridge.

Where does parachute come from?

Language of origin: French

Parachute came into English directly from French around the very end of the 1700s, at the dawn of ballooning. The French word was a compound coined to describe a device that guards against a fall: the prefix para- carries the sense of 'protection against' (it traces back through Italian to the Latin parare, meaning 'to prepare' or 'to ward off'), while chute is the ordinary French word for 'a fall' or 'a drop'. So the whole word literally means something like 'guard against falling', which is a tidy description of the canopy that slows a descent. The same para- of protection appears in 'parasol' (against the sun) and 'parapet', while the chute element is the same one English borrowed separately for a sloping channel or slide. The spelling trap lies in that French chute, where the letters ch are pronounced like 'sh' and the silent final e is kept, both faithful to the original French.

How the word is built

• para- (guard against, from Italian/Latin parare 'to ward off')
• chute (a fall, from French)