Word.ws English Dictionary

aeolipiles

/ˈiː.əʊ.lɪ.pʌɪlz/

aeolipiles is the plural of aeolipile.

Meaning of aeolipile

Noun

aeolipile (plural aeolipiles)

  1. A steam engine powered by rocket propulsion due to escaping steam, consisting of a pressure vessel mounted on a bearing, with one or more tubes which exhaust steam tangentially to the rotation axis so as to create rotation, which is mostly regarded as a curiosity with no practical use.
    • His machine, called an aeolipile, was quite simple. Water in a sealed kettle was heated to boiling over a fire. As the steam expanded, it traveled up two tubes into a sphere, which had two L-shaped openings. The steam would force its way out of the openings, causing the sphere to spin.2020, John Rocco, How We Got to the Moon, page 29

Questions about aeolipiles

What is aeolipiles the plural of?
Aeolipiles is the plural of aeolipile.
How do you pronounce aeolipiles?
Aeolipiles is pronounced /ˈiː.əʊ.lɪ.pʌɪlz/.

Words near aeolipiles in the dictionary

  1. aeolids
  2. aeolina
  3. aeolinas
  4. Aeoline
  5. aeolipile
  6. aeolipiles
  7. aeolipyle
  8. aeolipyles
  9. Aeolis
  10. Aeolis Mons
  11. aeolism

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: aeolipiles (page history and authors); aeolipile (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “aeolipiles.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/aeolipiles. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.