sky-hook

Noun

skyhook (plural skyhooks)

1. A hook imagined to be suspended in midair.
   • Those who yearn for skyhooks call those who eagerly settle for cranes "reductionists", and they can often make reductionism seem philistine and heartless.1995, Daniel Dennett, Darwin's Dangerous Idea: Evolution and the Meanings of Life, →ISBN, page 80
2. An overhead winch.
   • To each bolt attach a short length of chain and then run the individual chains to another large one that is run up to the skyhook, which is nothing more than a ratchet cable winch held by an overhead rafter.2009 January, Mike Brown, “The Art of Dismantling Your Restoration Project”, in Walneck's Classic Cycle Trader, page 109
3. A helicopter that lifts and transports heavy objects suspended by a heavy cable.
4. A proposed momentum-exchange tether for launching payloads into low Earth orbit by hooking them to the end of a cable that reaches down from an orbiting station into the upper atmosphere.
   • It was during those battles that ORBITAL-class armor was deployed to secure and defend the skyhooks and tethers above Earth, Luna, and Mars.2013 September 16, Halo 4: The Essential Visual Guide, New York: DK, →ISBN, →OCLC, page 159
5. (slang) A CB radio antenna.
   • […] despite the absence of the proverbial home-grown 75-foot high steel "sky hook."1982, Amateur Radio, volume 38, numbers 7-12, page 34
6. A form of the overhead smash in which the eastern grip is used to hit the ball farther behind the body than usually possible.

See all 8 meanings of skyhook