helicopter

pronunciation

How to pronounce helicopter in British English: UK [ˈhelɪkɒptə(r)] word uk audio image

How to pronounce helicopter in American English: US [ˈhelɪkɑːptər] word us audio image

Noun:

an aircraft without wings that obtains its lift from the rotation of overhead blades

Word Origin

helicopter: helicopter: [19] The term helicopter was coined in the mid-19th century from Greek hélix ‘spiral’ (source of English helix [16] and helical [17]) and Greek ptéron ‘wing’ (source of English pterodactyl and related to feather). The French were first in the field with hélicoptère, and the earliest record of the word in English, in 1861, was the barely anglicized helicoptere, but by the late 1880s the modern form helicopter was being used. (These 19th-century helicopters were of course a far cry from the present-day rotorblade- driven craft, which were introduced in the late 1930s; as their name suggests, they were lifted – or more usually not lifted – by rotating spiral-shaped aerofoils.)=> feather, helical, helix, pterodactyl

helicopter (n.): 1861, from French hélicoptère "device for enabling airplanes to rise perpendicularly," thus "flying machine propelled by screws." The idea was to gain lift from spiral aerofoils, and it didn't work. Used by Jules Verne and the Wright Brothers, the word transferred to helicopters in the modern sense when those were developed in the 1920s. From Greek helix (genitive helikos) "spiral" (see helix) + pteron "wing" (see pterodactyl). Nativized in Flemish as wentelwiek "with rotary vanes."