Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- n. Slang An antiaircraft gun.
- n. Slang Antiaircraft fire.
Wiktionary
- n. Antiaircraft artillery.
- n. uncountable Antiaircraft fire
- adj. Of or relating to antiaircraft warfare.
GNU Webster's 1913
- n. (Mil.) Artillery designed to shoot upward at airplanes; antiaircraft artillery.
WordNet 3.0
- n. artillery designed to shoot upward at airplanes
Etymologies
- From ack ("A") + ack ("A"), RAF WWI signalese for AA ("anti-aircraft"). (In modern signalese it would be called alpha-alpha.) (Wiktionary)
- British telephone code for AA, abbreviation for antiaircraft. (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)
Examples
“Studying this catalog of wicked devices, Jane observed herself beginning to undergo that change from rookie to hardened field veteran, barely flinching at the sound of ack-ack guns coming from next door, where soldiers practiced shooting at a towed target.”
“Three of us who had talked escape, Mullins, Ford and myself, took off in the pandemonium of ack-ack, bombs, strafing and napalm that hit a nearby building.”
“My favorite was one I painted with a white and blue belly so it was camouflaged to look like clouds and sky to the Nazi ack-ack gunners below.”
“Though when he tells the Iranians about shooting down their planes, I would like him to specify that it's not the United States, necessarily doing it, and it's certainly not me, but it's himself, Newt Gingrich, the John Wayne of WWIII, who will be behind the ack-ack gun.”
Larry Beinhart: Ah, World War III, Newt Gingrich is Calling You
“After an hour of the deafening ack-ack of the engine, we arrived at the muddy coast of Moheshkhali.”
Johann Hari: A Journey Across the Ground Zero of Global Warming
“Through the battered century of world wars and massive violence by other means, there had always been an undervoice that spoke through the cannon fire and ack-ack and that sometimes grew strong enough to merge with the battle sounds.”
“Quick cut to the skies: lumbering bombers releasing their payloads over sprawling cities, while fighters dart in and out around them and black clouds of ack-ack explode with sudden menace.”
All-Day Permanent Red: Alex Cox and the Long March of American Militarism
“He gave us…the whole ack-ack and locator defense system of southern Austria between Udine in Italy and Vienna in Austria.”
“Accordingly, Wynberg sent the following message on his W/T: Assembled at Hall and Innsbruck and west 26 trains 30 to 40 cars each loaded with ammo, tractors, ack-ack guns, gasoline, light equipment, leaving for Italy via Brenner April 3 after twenty one hundred GMT.”
“A German intelligence officer of ack-ack Regiment No. 76, stationed in Vienna, deserted to the Partisans.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘ack-ack’.
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defense
shield, aegis, armor, cuirass, plastron, inured, reinforced, cataphract, proof, targus, buckler, shield bearer and 123 more...
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Reduples
Go for it, brothers and sisters! I personally have been suffering long for lack of an open reduplicatives list
happy clappy, bribble-brabble, diddle-daddle, hugger-mugger, kikiriki, Bora-Bora, mahi-mahi, jingle-jangle, knick-knack paddy..., chit-chat, bon-bon, clapperclaw and 292 more...
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Hyphenated Repeats
Exactly reduplicated words connected by a hyphen.
aye-aye, cleek-cleek, arc-arc, killy-killy, dum-dum, tom-tom, argon-argon, carbon-carbon, win-win, lose-lose, bye-bye, choo-choo and 113 more...
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Skip The Light Fontastic
Fonts whose names are wacky, powerful, intriguing, whimsical, exotic and so on.
buttzilla, consolas, trebuchet, chanticleer, earthpig, dwarves, ciao, ghost town, goodfish, i still know, gorilla milkshake, immoral and 212 more...
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Toot Toot, Beep Beep!
chichi, tomtom, weewee, poohpooh, tutu, tsetse, ta-ta, peepee, woop woop, ack-ack, ding-ding, bon bon and 44 more...
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Hyphenated Actual Words
These kind of stun me whenever I see them. Language is just so cool.
chuck-will's-widow, will-o-the-wisp, saw-whet, topsy-turvy, linsey-woolsey, ne'er-do-well, gung-ho, so-so, cul-de-sac, fleur-de-lys, service-berry, major-domo and 33 more...
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Literarie: Mussolini: My Part In His ...
Bits from the predictably odd and chaotic Spike Milligan book of this title. He writes in diary-style about his service in the British Army's World War II campaign in Italy.
"I admit the way...b4, matelot, asleep, landing, fags, spam, ash wednesday, derv, nebelwurfer, the shits, hole in the ground, cookhouse and 79 more...
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perhapsolutely's Words
polyradiculoneuro..., abulia, abubble, abscission, abaft, zareba, abatis, abigail, abiogenesis, ablate, ablaut, abo and 1705 more...
Tweets
Looking for tweets for ack-ack.
bilby "It was a mixed day of planes, one moment Jerry, then the RAF, then Jerry. The Ack-Ack boys took no chances and fired at the lot. The Major was nearly out of mind by day's end trying to co-ordinate our efforts for maximum retaliation."
- Spike Milligan, 'Mussolini: My Part In His Downfall.' Apr 19, 2009