Word.ws English Dictionary

air tanker

air tanker noun: an aircraft used to deliver liquids (or powders) from the air, usually either fuel, fire-retardants, or water.

air tanker: an aircraft used to deliver liquids (or powders) from the air, usually either fuel,...
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Noun

air tanker (plural air tankers)

  1. An aircraft used to deliver liquids (or powders) from the air, usually either fuel, fire-retardants, or water.
    • Near-synonym: waterbomber (broadly synonymous)
    • In this, the airliner made contact with an air tanker and "topped up" its incompletely filled tanks with fuel enough for the contemplated journey.1945, Sydney E. Veale, To-morrow's Airliners, Airways and Airports, page 254
    Synonyms:
    AT, waterbomber[Appendix:Glossary

Examples of air tanker in a sentence

  • Sometime later, they made a rendezvous with a Victor air tanker for a top-up of fuel and then resumed patrol while the tanker headed back.1989, Julian Jay Savarin, Trophy, page 157:
  • If the only air tanker available is 300 miles away, it can still be over your fire in a fairly short period of time.2002, Robert W. Klinoff, Introduction to Fire Protection, page 188:

Synonyms of air tanker

  • AT
  • waterbomber[Appendix:Glossary

Forms of air tanker

pluralair tankers

Words formed from air tanker

Questions about air tanker

What does air tanker mean?
Air tanker means an aircraft used to deliver liquids (or powders) from the air, usually either fuel, fire-retardants, or water.
How do you use air tanker in a sentence?
Sometime later, they made a rendezvous with a Victor air tanker for a top-up of fuel and then resumed patrol while the tanker headed back.
What part of speech is air tanker?
Air tanker is a noun.
What is the plural of air tanker?
The plural of air tanker is air tankers.

Words near air tanker in the dictionary

  1. air superiority
  2. air support
  3. air supremacy
  4. air suspension
  5. air suspensions
  6. air tanker
  7. air tankers
  8. air taxi
  9. air taxis
  10. air terminal
  11. air terminals

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: air tanker (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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