Torpedo

How to spell torpedo

7 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce torpedo

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does torpedo mean?

1. nounA self-propelled underwater missile launched by a ship, submarine, or aircraft to strike a target below the waterline.
2. verbTo attack or sink with a torpedo, or figuratively to deliberately wreck a plan, deal, or proposal.

Torpedo in a sentence

• noun

  The submarine fired a single torpedo at the freighter.

• verb

  A leaked memo can quickly torpedo a fragile merger.

• noun

  Engineers loaded the torpedo into the forward launch tube.

• verb

  One harsh review threatened to torpedo the entire product launch.

Where does torpedo come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word comes straight from the Latin torpedo, which literally meant 'numbness' or 'stiffness' and was built on the verb torpere, meaning 'to be stiff, sluggish, or numb'. The Romans also used torpedo as the name for the electric ray, a flat fish that delivers a numbing shock to anything that touches it, so the sense of paralysing numbness sat behind the creature's name. English borrowed the word in the sixteenth century to describe that same shocking fish. From the late eighteenth century, inventors of underwater explosive devices reached for the vivid old name, and by the nineteenth century 'torpedo' had settled on the self-propelled underwater missile we picture today. The same torpere root also gives us 'torpid' and 'torpor', words for being dull, slow, or inactive, a useful reminder that the spelling keeps the single 'r' and the plain 'ed' in the middle.

How the word is built

• torped- (from Latin torpedo: numbness, also the electric ray that numbs)
• -o (noun ending)