Aerospace

Part of speech: noun

Pronunciation: [ˈɛə̯.ɹəʊˌspeɪs]

Definitions

1. The industry and science concerned with designing, building, and operating aircraft and spacecraft
2. The branch of engineering that deals with the development and manufacture of vehicles that fly through air and space encompasses both aviation and astronautics
3. The field focused on the technology and processes involved in creating and managing aircraft and spacecraft includes research, design, and operational aspects

Etymology: The word is a plain compound: "aero-", from Ancient Greek "āḗr" (genitive "aéros"), meaning air, joined to "space". The Greek root is the same ancient word for air that gives English its modern sense of anything relating to flight, and "space" arrives through Old French "espace" from Latin "spatium", meaning a stretch or extent. The two halves came together in the twentieth century, when the pairing described a single field covering both atmospheric flight and travel beyond the atmosphere. Before that, "aero-" prefixed many terms about flight, such as "aeronautics", while "space" referred to the open expanse generally, so the combination signalled that the boundary between the two domains had stopped mattering to engineers and planners. The word therefore names one discipline rather than two.

Synonyms: aviation, aeronautics