airdrop
airdrop noun: the act of delivering goods, equipment, or personnel by dropping them from an aircraft in flight. Also the alternative letter-case form of AirDrop.
Noun
airdrop (plural airdrops)
- The act of delivering goods, equipment, or personnel by dropping them from an aircraft in flight.
- The distribution of free tokens to help bootstrap a new cryptocurrency.
- But Facebook is also likely to carry out what’s known in cryptocurrency circles as an “air drop”, handing out small amounts of currency for free in an effort to kickstart the ecosystem.[2019 June 18, Kari Paul, “What is Libra? All you need to know about Facebook's new cryptocurrency”, in The Guardian
Verb (1)
airdrop (third-person singular simple present airdrops, present participle airdropping, simple past and past participle airdropped)
- To deliver goods, equipment, or personnel by dropping them from an aircraft in flight.
- The Mako is powered by a sealed hydrogen-oxygen fuel cell, and includes a small element zero core. While not large enough to nullify the vehicle’s mass, the core can reduce it enough to be safely air-dropped.2008, BioWare, Mass Effect, Redwood City: Electronic Arts, →ISBN, →OCLC, PC, scene: Vehicles: M35 Mako Codex entry
- To distribute free tokens to help bootstrap a new cryptocurrency.
Proper noun capitalized: AirDrop
AirDrop
Verb (2) capitalized: AirDrop
AirDrop (third-person singular simple present AirDrops, present participle AirDropping, simple past and past participle AirDropped)
- To transfer a file using AirDrop.
- “Another day another group of french^([sic]) teens trying to AirDrop me memes on the subway,” one woman tweeted. “In a crowd of teens and they keep trying to AirDrop me memes!!!” said another. One young Twitter user joked that she was going to a music festival last weekend “just to AirDrop.”2019 June 5, Taylor Lorenz, “When Grown-Ups Get Caught in Teens’ AirDrop Crossfire”, in The Atlantic
- Cyber-flashing is not experienced as a less harmful or less damaging behaviour just because it happens digitally rather than on the street. […] For those who have been AirDropped in a public place, there is not even the comfort of knowing for certain who is guilty.2023 April 19, Sophie Gallagher, “Cyber-flashing is just as damaging as the ‘real world’ equivalent. When will the law catch up?”, in The Guardian
Also used as
airdrop is also the alternative letter-case form of AirDrop.
Forms of airdrop
| Noun | |
|---|---|
| plural | airdrops |
| alternative form | air-drop |
| Verb | |
| third-person singular present | airdrops |
| present participle | airdropping |
| past participle | airdropped |
| past | airdropped |
| third-person singular present | AirDrops |
| present participle | AirDropping |
| past participle | AirDropped |
| past | AirDropped |
Origin of airdrop
From air + drop.
By the analogy of an airdrop, in which items are delivered by dropping them from an aircraft in flight.
Words formed from airdrop
Questions about airdrop
- What does airdrop mean?
- Airdrop means the act of delivering goods, equipment, or personnel by dropping them from an aircraft in flight.
- What part of speech is airdrop?
- Airdrop can be a noun, a verb or a proper noun.
- What is the plural of airdrop?
- The plural of airdrop is airdrops.
Words near airdrop in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: airdrop (page history and authors); AirDrop (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.
Last updated:
Cite this entry: “airdrop.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/airdrop. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.