phugoid.
Of the motion of an aircraft, missile, or other flying object: continuously oscillating in a vertical plane due to the object pitching up and climbing, thus slowing down; then pitching down and descending, thus speeding up.
Meaning & usage
Of the motion of an aircraft, missile, or other flying object: continuously oscillating in a vertical plane due to the object pitching up and climbing, thus slowing down; then pitching down and descending, thus speeding up.
Where this word comes from
The adjective is a learned borrowing from Ancient Greek φῠγή (phŭgḗ, “fleeing, flight; escape; retreat”) (ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *bʰewg- (“to flee”)) + English -oid (“suffix meaning ‘having the likeness of, resembling’, forming adjectives and nouns”). The word was coined by the British aerodynamicist and engineer Frederick W. Lanchester (1868–1946) in his book Aerodonetics (1908), the author mistaking the meaning of φῠγή (phŭgḗ) to be “flight” in the sense of “the act of flying”: see the quotations. The noun is derived from the adjective.
The motion of an aircraft, missile, or other flying object continuously oscillating in a vertical plane due to the object pitching up and climbing, thus slowing down; then pitching down and descending, thus speeding up.
Where this word comes from
The adjective is a learned borrowing from Ancient Greek φῠγή (phŭgḗ, “fleeing, flight; escape; retreat”) (ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *bʰewg- (“to flee”)) + English -oid (“suffix meaning ‘having the likeness of, resembling’, forming adjectives and nouns”). The word was coined by the British aerodynamicist and engineer Frederick W. Lanchester (1868–1946) in his book Aerodonetics (1908), the author mistaking the meaning of φῠγή (phŭgḗ) to be “flight” in the sense of “the act of flying”: see the quotations. The noun is derived from the adjective.
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Definitions, grammatical labels, IPA, etymology and examples: Wiktionary contributors, extracted by Kaikki / Wiktextract. Adapted under CC BY-SA 4.0. Selected fields and authored examples are shown; third-party quotations and audio are omitted. See contributor history.
Last enriched 2026-09-10. Definitions are in English. Romanizations are shown when supplied by the source; syllable estimates are omitted for unsupported scripts.