missile - Wiktionary, the free dictionary (original) (raw)

From Wiktionary, the free dictionary

A selection of missiles (military)

From Latin missile (“thrown weapon, projectile”), neuter of missilis (“throwable, capable of being thrown”), from mittere (“to send”). From 1611. Compare Middle French missile (“projectile”), from 1636.

missile (plural missiles)

  1. Any object used as a weapon by being thrown or fired through the air, such as stone, arrow or bullet. [from 17th c.]
    The Rhodians, who used leaden bullets, were able to project their missiles twice as far as the Persian slingers, who used large stones.
    • 1865, Walt Whitman, “When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d”, in Sequel to Drum-Taps: When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d and other poems:
      And I saw askant the armies, / I saw as in noiseless dreams hundreds of battle-flags, / Borne through the smoke of the battles and pierc’d with missiles I saw them, / And carried hither and yon through the smoke, and torn and bloody, / And at last but a few shreds left on the staffs, (and all in silence,) / And the staffs all splinter’d and broken.
    • 2012, Paragraph 24, R v Blackshaw (2012) WLR 1126:
      Riot officers and police on horseback were deployed to disperse the crowns[sic – meaning _crowds_], but they came under attack from bottles, fireworks and other missiles.
  2. (military) A self-propelled projectile whose trajectory can be adjusted after it is launched. [from 20th c.]
    That missile is explosive enough to kill hundreds.

Weapons with rocket propulsion but without guidance after the moment of launch nearly always are called by other names, including rocket artillery and rocket-propelled grenade. The collocation guided missile is redundant in light of that fact, but it is often used for clarity because it prevents any possible ambiguity about which sense of the word missile is meant in each discussion.

air-based weapon

self-propelled, guidable projectile

Inherited from Middle French, from Latin missilis (“that may be thrown”) (as in English).

missile m (plural missiles)

  1. missile
  2. (slang) bombshell, hottie
    Synonyms: avion de chasse, bombe, frappe

missile m (plural missili)

  1. missile

missile m or f by sense (plural missili)

  1. (relational) missile

From missilis.

missile n (genitive missilis); third declension

  1. a thrown weapon, such as a javelin
  2. (plural) presents from the Emperor thrown to the people
  3. (New Latin) a missile (self-propelled projectile)
    • 2018, Tuomo Pekkanen, Foederatio occidentalis Syriam missilibus percussit [1], Nuntii Latini 20.4.2018:
      USA, Britannia, Francia mane Sabbati plus centum missilia in tres metas Syriacas miserunt, in quibus arma chemica conficiebantur et tractabantur.
      The US, UK, and France Saturday morning fired over a hundred missiles at three Syrian sites in which chemical weapons were being built and stored.

Third-declension noun (neuter, pure i-stem).

missile

  1. nominative/accusative/vocative neuter singular of missilis