Word.ws English Dictionary

soft landing

soft landing noun: a landing that does not result in the destruction of the payload or the vehicle. Also the present participle and gerund of soft land.

Noun (1)

soft landing (countable and uncountable, plural soft landings)

  1. (countable) A landing that does not result in the destruction of the payload or the vehicle.
  2. (countable) A business cycle downturn which avoids recession.
    • Hopes that the US economy is heading for a “soft landing” were boosted yesterday by the latest job figures, fuelling a rally in stocks and bonds.2023 November 4, Harriet Clarfelt, Jennifer Hughes, “Hopes build for US ‘soft landing’”, in FT Weekend, London: The Financial Times Ltd., →ISSN, →OCLC, page 1
    • The IMF said the global economy was gliding towards a “soft landing” after coping with the impact of tough central bank interest-rate action to reduce inflation.2024 January 30, Larry Elliott, “IMF warns Jeremy Hunt against tax cuts in budget”, in The Guardian, →ISSN
  3. (uncountable) A form of mass spectrometry characterized by deposition of intact species on surfaces at low kinetic energies which precludes the fragmentation of the incident species.

Noun (2)

soft landing (plural soft landings)

  1. (slang, rhythm games) Sudden or extreme changes in speed.

Also used as

soft landing is also the present participle and gerund of soft land.

Forms of soft landing

pluralsoft landings

Origin of soft landing

From the beatmania IIDX 2nd style song "SOFT LANDING ON THE BODY".

Questions about soft landing

What does soft landing mean?
Soft landing means a landing that does not result in the destruction of the payload or the vehicle.
What part of speech is soft landing?
Soft landing is a noun.
What is the plural of soft landing?
The plural of soft landing is soft landings.

Words near soft landing in the dictionary

  1. soft key
  2. soft keys
  3. soft kill
  4. soft land
  5. soft landed
  6. soft landing
  7. soft landings
  8. soft lands
  9. soft launch
  10. soft launches
  11. soft link

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: soft landing (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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Cite this entry: “soft landing.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/soft_landing. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.