hovercraft
Americannoun
noun
Other Word Forms
Noun Inflected Forms
Etymology
Origin of hovercraft
Explanation
A vehicle that hovers while traveling over land and water is called a hovercraft. Do you need to deliver a batch of cookies to the far side of the lake and down a dirt road? Better take the hovercraft! Although it's not always obvious when you watch a hovercraft move, it does actually hover above the ground or water surface while it's moving. Hovercrafts use air pressure and currents to glide freely over difficult terrain, including mud and ice. As it rides on a "cushion of air," a hovercraft is also known as an "air-cushion vehicle" or "ACV." It takes an actual aircraft pilot to operate one.
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
The series 'How it works' had titles as diverse as Television, The Hovercraft and Farm Machinery.
From BBC • Mar. 5, 2015
F-4 Phantom jets, 800 British Chieftain tanks and an assortment of destroyers, Hovercraft and troop-transport planes.
From Time Magazine Archive
It restored $93 million for the development of a "surface-effect ship," which, like a Hovercraft, will be able to skim the water at high speeds.
From Time Magazine Archive
The next Hovercraft to be built, said Chief Designer Richard Stanton-Jones, will weigh 40 tons and carry 80 passengers at 100 m.p.h.
From Time Magazine Archive
I'd made the mistake of wagering heavily on Hovercraft.
From Frigid Fracas by Reynolds, Mack
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
