Word.ws English Dictionary

tailhook

tailhook noun: a device attached to the empennage of some military fixed-wing aircraft, used to achieve rapid deceleration during landings by catching the arresting gear of a runway or aircraft carrier.

Noun

tailhook (plural tailhooks)

  1. A device attached to the empennage of some military fixed-wing aircraft, used to achieve rapid deceleration during landings by catching the arresting gear of a runway or aircraft carrier.

Forms of tailhook

pluraltailhooks

Origin of tailhook

From tail + hook.

Questions about tailhook

What does tailhook mean?
Tailhook means a device attached to the empennage of some military fixed-wing aircraft, used to achieve rapid deceleration during landings by catching the arresting gear of a runway or aircraft carrier.
What part of speech is tailhook?
Tailhook is a noun.
What is the plural of tailhook?
The plural of tailhook is tailhooks.

Words near tailhook in the dictionary

  1. tailguts
  2. tailhead
  3. tailheads
  4. tailhole
  5. tailholes
  6. tailhook
  7. tailhooks
  8. tailing
  9. tailing away
  10. tailing down
  11. tailing in

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: tailhook (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: “tailhook.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/tailhook. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.