heavier-than-air
heavier-than-air adjective: weighing more than the volume of air which it displaces.
Adjective
heavier-than-air (comparative form only)
- Weighing more than the volume of air which it displaces.
- And folks laughed at Santos Dumont, at the Wrights, and at all the other fellows, who said they could take a heavier-than-air machine, and skim above the clouds like a bird.1914, Victor Appleton, chapter 1, in Tom Swift And His Photo Telephone
- Of, pertaining to, or using an aircraft which weighs more than the volume of air it displaces.
- Died. John Thomas Moore, 65, who, on a windy day in December 1903, lent a hand putting a flying machine on a runway, was the last surviving witness to the Wright brothers' historic first heavier-than-air flight at Kitty Hawk.1952 March 10, “Milestones”, in Time
Questions about heavier-than-air
- What does heavier-than-air mean?
- Heavier-than-air means weighing more than the volume of air which it displaces.
- What part of speech is heavier-than-air?
- Heavier-than-air is an adjective.
Words near heavier-than-air in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: heavier-than-air (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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