Word.ws English Dictionary

lithobraking

lithobraking noun: deceleration of a falling object due to impact with the ground. Also the present participle and gerund of lithobrake.

Noun

lithobraking (uncountable)

  1. (humorous) Deceleration of a falling object due to impact with the ground.
    • Beagle 2 has successfully completed its critical lithobraking maneuver, marking another step for robotkind.2003 December 26, Paul F Austin, “Lithobraking maneuver complete”, in alt.peeves (Usenet)
    • In a big impact there is not enough time for the ejecta to radiatively cool in transit, so that reëntry (either aerobraking in the atmosphere or lithobraking at the surface) further heats already hot ejecta.2006, Paul J. Thomas, Roland D. Hicks, Christopher F. Chyba, Christopher P. McKay, Comets and the Origin and Evolution of Life, Springer Science & Business Media, →ISBN, page 238

Also used as

lithobraking is also the present participle and gerund of lithobrake.

Origin of lithobraking

From litho- (“pertaining to stone”) + braking, by analogy to aerobraking. First attested in c. 1999.

From lithobrake + -ing.

Questions about lithobraking

What does lithobraking mean?
Lithobraking means deceleration of a falling object due to impact with the ground.
What part of speech is lithobraking?
Lithobraking is a noun.

Words near lithobraking in the dictionary

  1. lithobiomorph
  2. lithobiomorphs
  3. lithobrake
  4. lithobraked
  5. lithobrakes
  6. lithobraking
  7. lithocapture
  8. lithocaptured
  9. lithocaptures
  10. lithocapturing
  11. lithocarp

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: lithobraking (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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Cite this entry: “lithobraking.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/lithobraking. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.