slipstreams

Noun

slipstream (countable and uncountable, plural slipstreams)

1. 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
2. (broadly, figuratively) 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
3. The relative wind experienced as a result of movement through air.
4. The airflow over a propeller-driven aircraft generated by the motion of its propeller(s).

   Synonyms:

   prop wash

5. (uncountable) 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

See all 7 meanings of slipstream