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air raid

See more synonyms for air raid on Thesaurus.com
noun
  1. a raid by aircraft, especially for bombing a particular area.
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Origin of air raid

First recorded in 1910–15
Related formsair-raid, adjectiveair raider, noun
Dictionary.com Unabridged Based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2018

Examples from the Web for air raid

Contemporary Examples

Historical Examples

  • And on the home front, you'd have air-raid shelters that would be effective.

    Project Mastodon

    Clifford Donald Simak

  • Darling, how can you be so sensible as to think of that sort of thing in the middle of an air-raid?

    Dodo Wonders

    E. F. Benson

  • One night I reached Paris simultaneously with an air-raid warning.

    Huts in Hell

    Daniel A. Poling

  • You look about as 'appy as 'Earty does when 'e 'ears there's goin' to be an air-raid.

    Adventures of Bindle

    Herbert George Jenkins

  • "I must institute a proper drill for air-raid alarms," said Char, unsmiling.

    The War-Workers

    E.M. Delafield

British Dictionary definitions for air raid

air raid

noun
    1. an attack by hostile aircraft
    2. (as modifier)an air-raid shelter
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Collins English Dictionary - Complete & Unabridged 2012 Digital Edition © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012

Word Origin and History for air raid

n.

1914, from air (n.1) + raid (n.); originally in reference to British attacks Sept. 22, 1914, on Zeppelin bases at Cologne and Düsseldorf in World War I. The German word is Fliegerangriff "aviator-attack," and if Old English had survived into the 20th century our word instead might be fleogendeongrype.

One didn't dare to inhale for fear of breathing it in. It was the sound of eighteen hundred airplanes approaching Hamburg from the south at an unimaginable height. We had already experienced two hundred or even more air raids, among them some very heavy ones, but this was something completely new. And yet there was an immediate recognition: this was what everyone had been waiting for, what had hung for months like a shadow over everything we did, making us weary. It was the end. [Hans Erich Nossack, "Der Untergang," 1942]
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Online Etymology Dictionary, © 2010 Douglas Harper