Word.ws English Dictionary

shock stall

/ˈʃɒk ˌstɔːl/US/ˈʃɑk ˌstɔl/

shock stall noun: a stall (“sudden loss of lift”) caused when the airflow over an aircraft's wings is disturbed by shock waves that occurs at a specific Mach number when the aircraft is accelerating to transonic speeds.

Noun

shock stall (plural shock stalls)

  1. A stall (“sudden loss of lift”) caused when the airflow over an aircraft's wings is disturbed by shock waves that occurs at a specific Mach number when the aircraft is accelerating to transonic speeds.
    • When I was down to 32,000 feet the altimeter was spinning merrily and the dive was very steep and I was pulling back on the stick in the usual way due to the change of trim at the shock stall.1944 April 27, Peter Caygill, quoting Tony Martindale, “Problems with Compressibility”, in Sound Barrier: The Rocky Road to MACH 1.0+, Barnsley, South Yorkshire: Pen & Sword Aviation, Pen & Sword...
    • His [Group Captain Hugh Joseph Wilson's] flights revealed at least two things: the effectiveness of turbojets used for the first time in international record breaking, and he came sufficiently close to the speed of sound to experience the effects of a partial shock stall. [...] It was noticed that...1947 August, Oliver Stewart, “Breaking the World’s Speed Record”, in Max Karant, editor, Flying, volume 41, number 2, Chicago, Ill.: Ziff-Davis Publishing Company, →ISSN, →OCLC, page 60, column 1

Verb

shock stall (third-person singular simple present shock stalls, present participle shock stalling, simple past and past participle shock stalled)

  1. (intransitive) Of an aircraft or a component of it: to undergo a shock stall.
    • The tailplane usually becomes more effective as a stabiliser at high Mach numbers because there are decreases of wing lift-curve slope and rate of change of downwash with mean lift coefficient. The latter effect is mainly due to the wing-root shock stalling at a lower Mach number than the rest of...1947, S. Kirkby, A[braham] Robinson, Interference on a Wing due to a Body at Supersonic Speeds (Aeronautical Research Council Reports and Memoranda; no. 2500), London: Her Majesty's Stationery...
    • [A] loss of downwash due to the main wing shock stalling would result in an undesirable diving tendency.1947 January, The Journal of the Royal Aeronautical Society, volume 51, part 1, London: Royal Aeronautical Society, →ISSN, →OCLC, page 130, column 1

Examples of shock stall in a sentence

  • Life saving dope is disseminated [during ground training] on the warning signals and recognition of shock stalls and measures in recovering from them.1949 December, “Jetterbugs Made: Not Born to the Trade”, in Arthur L. Schoeni, editor, Naval Aviation News, number 332, Washington, D.C....
  • In the present work, the shock stall of an oscillating NACA64A010 airfoil for which detailed experimental data are available is studied.2001, Paola Cinnella, “Numerical Study of Transonic Shock/Boundary Layer Interactions on an Oscillating Airfoil Using a Third-order Scheme...
  • Anyone on the instructor's course should be experienced enough to handle the odd shock stall, which by definition was only going to happen at height where there was plenty of room to sort things out.2010, Tony Doyle, “To Valley on the Gnat”, in Flying at the Edge: 20 Years of Front-line and Display Flying in the Cold War Era, Barnsley...
  • The latter effect is mainly due to the wing-root shock stalling at a lower Mach number than the rest of the wing.1947, S. Kirkby, A[braham] Robinson, Interference on a Wing due to a Body at Supersonic Speeds (Aeronautical Research Council Reports and...

Forms of shock stall

Noun
pluralshock stalls
alternative formshockstall
alternative formshock-stall
Verb
third-person singular presentshock stalls
present participleshock stalling
past participleshock stalled
pastshock stalled

Origin of shock stall

The noun is derived from shock + stall (“loss of lift due to an airfoil’s critical angle of attack being exceeded”). The verb is derived from the noun.

Words formed from shock stall

Questions about shock stall

What does shock stall mean?
Shock stall means a stall (“sudden loss of lift”) caused when the airflow over an aircraft's wings is disturbed by shock waves that occurs at a specific Mach number when the aircraft is accelerating to transonic speeds.
How do you use shock stall in a sentence?
Life saving dope is disseminated [during ground training] on the warning signals and recognition of shock stalls and measures in recovering from them.
What part of speech is shock stall?
Shock stall can be a noun or a verb.
How do you pronounce shock stall?
Shock stall is pronounced /ˈʃɒk ˌstɔːl/ (UK).
What is the plural of shock stall?
The plural of shock stall is shock stalls.

Words near shock stall in the dictionary

  1. shock paddle
  2. shock paddles
  3. shock rock
  4. shock site
  5. shock sites
  6. shock stall
  7. shock stalled
  8. shock stalling
  9. shock stallings
  10. shock stalls
  11. shock tactics

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: shock stall (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:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-shock stall.wav.

Cite this entry: “shock stall.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/shock_stall. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.