slipstream
/ˈslɪp.stɹiːm/
slipstream noun: the low-pressure zone immediately following a rapidly moving object, caused by turbulence.
Noun
slipstream (countable and uncountable, plural slipstreams)
- The low-pressure zone immediately following a rapidly moving object, caused by turbulence.
- Monza was the seventh race in a row at which Leclerc had out-qualified Vettel. There were extenuating circumstances this time - Vettel did not have a slipstream on his first lap and the farcical end to qualifying prevented him doing another - but a clear pattern is emerging.2019 September 8, Andrew Benson, BBC Sport
- A generated advantage which makes forward movement easier.
- The Republicans, who in fact quintessentially represent what I understand to be private and special interests of a narrow economic kind, have nevertheless managed, flying in the slipstream of Ronald Reagan's rhetoric, to look like the true guardians of the nation's public interest.2012, Benjamin Barber, “Liberal Values in the Age of Interdependence”, in Logos: A Journal of Modern Society and Culture
- The relative wind experienced as a result of movement through air.
- The airflow over a propeller-driven aircraft generated by the motion of its propeller(s).
- Synonyms:
- prop wash
- A genre of fantastic or non-realistic fiction that crosses conventional genre boundaries.
- Slipstream is not simply a mixture of fantasy and realism, but something which lies between or even beyond the two.2000, Damien Broderick, quoting Justina Robson and Rozanne Rabinowitz, Transrealist Fiction: Writing in the Slipstream of Science, Greenwood Publishing Group, →ISBN, page 88
Verb
slipstream (third-person singular simple present slipstreams, present participle slipstreaming, simple past and past participle slipstreamed)
- To take advantage of the suction produced by a slipstream by travelling immediately behind the slipstream generator.
- Although dangerous, over-the-road truck drivers sometimes slipstream with each other to save fuel.
- Synonyms:
- draft
- To incorporate additional software (such as patches) into an existing installer.
- You do this by slipstreaming the updates into the distribution folder.2003, William Boswell, Inside Windows Server 2003
- A better solution is to create a bootable Windows XP installation CD slipstreamed with the current service pack...2004, Ed Bott, Carl Siechert, Craig Stinson, Microsoft Windows XP inside out
Synonyms of slipstream
Forms of slipstream
| Noun | |
|---|---|
| plural | slipstreams |
| Verb | |
| third-person singular present | slipstreams |
| present participle | slipstreaming |
| past participle | slipstreamed |
| past | slipstreamed |
Origin of slipstream
Compound of slip + stream. Fiction sense coined by cyberpunk author Bruce Sterling in 1989.
Words formed from slipstream
Questions about slipstream
- What does slipstream mean?
- Slipstream means the low-pressure zone immediately following a rapidly moving object, caused by turbulence.
- What part of speech is slipstream?
- Slipstream can be a noun or a verb.
- How do you pronounce slipstream?
- Slipstream is pronounced /ˈslɪp.stɹiːm/.
- What is the plural of slipstream?
- The plural of slipstream is slipstreams.
Words near slipstream in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: slipstream (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)-NaomiAmethyst-slipstream.wav.
Cite this entry: “slipstream.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/slipstream. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.