flight

English Online Dictionary. What means flight‎? What does flight mean?

English

Pronunciation

• enPR: flīt, IPA^(key): /flaɪt/
• Rhymes: -aɪt

Etymology 1

From Middle English flight, from Old English flyht (“flight”), from Proto-West Germanic *fluhti (“flight”), derived from *fleuganą (“to fly”), from Proto-Indo-European *plewk- (“to fly”), enlargement of *plew- (“flow”). Analyzable as fly +‎ -t (variant of -th).

Cognate with West Frisian flecht (“flight”), Dutch vlucht (“flight”), German Flucht (“flight”) (etymology 2).

Noun

flight (countable and uncountable, plural flights)

1. The act of flying.

2. An instance of flying.

3. (collective) A collective term for doves or swallows.

4. A trip made by an aircraft, particularly one between two cities or countries, which is often planned or reserved in advance.

5. A series of stairs between landings.
6. A group of canal locks with a short distance between them
7. A floor which is reached by stairs or escalators.

8. The feathers on an arrow or dart used to help it follow an even path.
9. A paper airplane. (Can we add an example for this sense?)
10. (cricket) The movement of a spinning ball through the air, with its speed, trajectory and drift.
11. The ballistic trajectory of an arrow or other projectile.
12. An aerodynamic surface designed to guide such a projectile's trajectory.
13. An air force unit.
14. (US, naval) A numbered subclass of a given class of warship, denoting incremental modernizations to the original design.
15. Several sample glasses of a specific wine varietal or other beverage. The pours are smaller than a full glass and the flight will generally include three to five different samples.
16. (by extension) A comparable sample of beers or other drinks.
17. (engineering) The shaped material forming the thread of a screw.
18. An episode of imaginative thinking or dreaming.

    a flight of fancy; a flight of the imagination

19. (advertising, broadcasting) An advertising campaign of fixed length.

Hyponyms

Derived terms

Related terms

Translations

Adjective

flight (comparative more flight, superlative most flight)

1. (obsolete) Fast, swift, fleet.

Verb

flight (third-person singular simple present flights, present participle flighting, simple past and past participle flighted)

1. (cricket, of a spin bowler) To throw the ball in such a way that it has more airtime and more spin than usual.
2. (sports, by extension, transitive) To throw or kick something so as to send it flying with more loft or airtime than usual.

See also

Appendix:English collective nouns

Etymology 2

From Middle English, from Old English flyht, from Proto-West Germanic *fluhti, derived from *fleuhaną (“to flee”). Analyzable as flee +‎ -t (variant of -th). Cognate with Dutch vlucht, German Flucht (etymology 1).

Noun

flight (countable and uncountable, plural flights)

1. The act of fleeing.

   take flight

   the flight of a refugee

Derived terms

• black flight
• capital flight
• fight-or-flight
• white flight

Related terms

• flee

Translations

Middle English

Alternative forms

• flyght

Etymology

Inherited from Old English flyht.

Noun

flight (plural flights)

1. flight (act of flying)

Descendants

• English: flight
• Scots: flycht, flicht

Swedish

Etymology

Borrowed from English flight. Attested since 1967.

Noun

flight c

1. a flight ((regular) trip made by a passenger aircraft)

Declension

See also

• flygning

References

• flight in Svensk ordbok (SO)
• flight in Svenska Akademiens ordlista (SAOL)