mayday
Syllables: may·day/ˈmeɪ̯deɪ̯/
More pronunciations (1)Fewer pronunciations
Australia/ˈmæɪ̯deɪ̯/
mayday noun: an international distress signal used by shipping and aircraft.
Noun (1)
mayday (plural maydays)
- An international distress signal used by shipping and aircraft.
- "Odd that she hasn't sent out a Mayday."
"That is curious. Her radio must be disabled."2002, Clive Cussler, Valhalla Rising, page 47 - The captain did a safety drill. This covered where the emergency position-indicating radio beacon (EPIRB) was located, how to make a mayday call, and where the fire extinguishers were. A crew member demonstrated how to put on an immersion suit. These survival suits are waterproof full-body garments...2025 October 21, Rose George, “‘I knew in my head we were dying’: the last voyage of the Scandies Rose”, in The Guardian, archived from the original on 03 Nov 2025
- "Odd that she hasn't sent out a Mayday."
Noun (2) capitalized: Mayday
Mayday (plural Maydays)
- Alternative form of mayday.
- Misspelling of May Day.
mayday meaning in Malay and Thai
mayday in Malay
- international distress signal used by shipping and aircraft
- mayday
mayday in Thai
- international distress signal used by shipping and aircraft
- เมย์เดย์ mee-dee
Forms of mayday
| plural | maydays |
|---|---|
| alternative form | Mayday |
| plural | Maydays |
Origin of mayday
From the distress signal mayday, from French m'aider, short for Venez m'aider! (“Come to help me!”). The term was conceived in the early 1920s by Frederick Stanley Mockford, officer-in-charge of radio at Croydon Airport in England. He had been asked to think of a word that would indicate distress and would easily be understood by all pilots and ground staff in an emergency. Since much of the air traffic at the time was between Croydon and Le Bourget Airport in Paris, he proposed the term "mayday," the phonetic equivalent of the French m'aider.
Words that rhyme with mayday
Questions about mayday
- What does mayday mean?
- Mayday means an international distress signal used by shipping and aircraft.
- What is mayday in Malay?
- Mayday in Malay is mayday. See Mayday meaning in Malay.
- What part of speech is mayday?
- Mayday is a noun.
- How do you pronounce mayday?
- Mayday is pronounced /ˈmeɪ̯deɪ̯/.
- What is the plural of mayday?
- The plural of mayday is maydays.
Words near mayday in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: mayday (page history and authors); Mayday (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: en-us-mayday.ogg, En-au-mayday.ogg.
Cite this entry: “mayday.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/mayday. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.