air jacket

Noun

air jacket (plural air jackets)

1. A lifejacket.
   • AIR-JACKET. A leathern garment furnished with inflated bladders, to buoy the wearer up in the water.1867, William Henry Smyth, The Sailor’s Word-Book, London: Blackie & Son, page 28
   • She wore an inflatable air jacket stolen from Air France.1985, Lawrence Durrell, chapter 1, in Quinx, New York: Viking, page 29
2. An inflatable vest worn to cushion falls.
   • […] our army all should wear a new uniform; all our horse infantry should wear air jackets, and all our foot cavalry should wear cork waistcoats; and then ye know why they’d be all over the sea before you could say Jack Robinson.1765, George Alexander Stevens, The Celebrated Lecture on Heads, London: R. Richards, Part 3, p. 16
   • Anna Sparks shrugged into her air jacket and slipped her bib over the top of it. There was a time when she'd have felt invincible in the lead-up to the cross-country, especially if she'd posted a personal best of 40.3 to lie third behind David Powell and Sam Tide after the dressage, but today...2014, Lauren St John, The One Dollar Horse
3. An enclosed space containing nothing but air that surrounds something in order to provide insulation.
   • In the first Daimler gasoline engines a current of air was forced through an air jacket surrounding the cylinder by means of a rotary fan mounted on the crank shaft.1906 November 7, E. Favary, “Air Cooling Devices”, in The Horseless Age: The Automobile Trade Magazine, volume 18, number 19
   • But instead of having an air jacket around the firebox or stove, it has many water pipes among the flames.1938, Benjamin Charles Gruenberg, Samuel P. Unzicker, Science in Our Lives, page 222