Word.ws English Dictionary

control tower

control tower noun: an airport building from which the air traffic control unit monitors and directs the movement of aircraft on and around the airport.

Noun

control tower (plural control towers)

  1. An airport building from which the air traffic control unit monitors and directs the movement of aircraft on and around the airport.
    • As he taxied out to the far side of the field, 38-year-old Captain Benton R. ("Lucky") Baldwin was cleared for takeoff. The control tower gave him his choice of two runways—No. 13 or No. 18.1947 June 9, “National Affairs: Holocaust at LaGuardia”, in Time
  2. An enclosed, raised structure occupied by one or more persons who operate or exercise control over railway traffic, ship movement, a racetrack, machinery, etc.
    • Ned Newton stood beside Tom in the control tower of the great tank as she started on her homeward way.1918, Victor Appleton, chapter 12, in Tom Swift And His War Tank
    • In a railway control tower at Dunkirk, Ohio, Operator Cliff Schwartzkopf waited for the Pennsylvania's Pennsylvanian, eastbound from Chicago to New York.1941 November 17, “Catastrophe: Crash at Dunkirk”, in Time

control tower meaning in Hindi, Urdu, Arabic and Malay

control tower in Hindi

airport control tower
नियंत्रण टॉवर niyantraṇ ṭŏvar

control tower in Urdu

airport control tower
نگراں مینار nigarā̃-mīnār

control tower in Arabic

airport control tower
بُرْج مُرَاقَبَة burj murāqaba

control tower in Malay

airport control tower
menara kawalan
More languagesFewer languages
control tower in Indonesian
menara pengawas
control tower in Persian
برج مراقبت
control tower in Thai
หอควบคุมการบิน hɔ̌ɔ-kûuap-kum-gaan-bin, หอควบคุม hɔ̌ɔ-kûuap-kum

Examples of control tower in a sentence

  • The hump cabin and its relay room are at the summit of the hump on the right-hand side, and the control tower is on the centre line of the yard between the primary and secondary retarders.1959 July, “Temple Mills Marshalling Yard”, in Railway Magazine, page 492:
  • From the control tower high above the sprawling container port here, Danny Law helps manage the relentless loading and unloading of cargo, day and night.2006 January 29, Thomas Fuller, “China trade unbalances shipping”, in New York Times, retrieved 18 Jan 2012:

Forms of control tower

pluralcontrol towers

Questions about control tower

What does control tower mean?
Control tower means an airport building from which the air traffic control unit monitors and directs the movement of aircraft on and around the airport.
What is control tower in Hindi?
Control tower in Hindi is नियंत्रण टॉवर (niyantraṇ ṭŏvar). See Control tower meaning in Hindi.
How do you use control tower in a sentence?
The hump cabin and its relay room are at the summit of the hump on the right-hand side, and the control tower is on the centre line of the yard between the primary and secondary retarders.
What part of speech is control tower?
Control tower is a noun.
What is the plural of control tower?
The plural of control tower is control towers.

Words near control tower in the dictionary

  1. control structures
  2. control surface
  3. control surfaces
  4. control theories
  5. control theory
  6. control tower
  7. control towers
  8. control unit
  9. control units
  10. control variable
  11. control variables

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: control tower (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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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-control tower.wav.

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