Rocket definitions and example sentences on Wordnik

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Definitions (43)

American Heritage Dictionary (11)

noun A rocket engine.
noun A vehicle or device propelled by one or more rocket engines, especially such a vehicle designed to travel through space.
noun A projectile weapon carrying a warhead that is powered and propelled by rockets.

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Century Dictionary (22)

A cylindrical tube of pasteboard or metal filled with a mixture of niter, sulphur, charcoal, etc., which, on being ignited at the base, propels the tube forward by the impact of the liberated gases against the atmosphere. Rockets are used for various purposes. In war, when the apparatus generally consists of a sheet-iron case filled with a composition such as is described above, and a head which may be solid, or hollow and filled with a bursting-charge. Life-rockets, used for carrying a line over a wreck, and thus establishing communication between the ship and the shore. The Russian rocket has a short stick attached to the base and armed with a hook which slides in a groove on the under side of the rocket-stand and engages the ring of the chain attached to the line as the rocket leaves the stand. The German system comprises five-centimeter and eight-centimeter rockets and eight-centimeter anchor-rockets, all of which have long chains attached to the rocket-stick at one end and to the line at the other. The English system consists of double Boxer rockets placed end to end in a single metallic case, having a stick fastened to one side of the case. The Hooper rocket is a modification of the Hale warrocket, and was very unsatisfactory in its results. All these rockets have metallic cases, and are fired by means of fuses. The uncertainty of their flight and their liability to deterioration by transportation and storage have prevented their adoption for life-saving purposes in the United States. Signalor sky-rockets, pasteboard cylinders filled with nearly the same composition, but with a conical head containing stars of various ingredients and colors, and a quantity of powder which, when the rocket has attained its greatest height, bursts the cylinder, when the ignited stars spread through the air and cast a brilliant or colored light producing a beautiful effect. These rockets are used in signaling or for mere pyrotechnic display, Rockets are kept point foremost in their flight by means of a stick projecting behind, which acts in the same way as the shaft of an arrow. To the head of such rockets may be placed petards, balls of fire, granadoes, etc., and so may be applied to warlike affairs. Mathematical Recreations (1674). And the final event to himself [Burke] has been that, as he rose like a rocket, he fell like the stick. T. Paine, Letters to the Addressers. (Bartlett.)
The lever by which a forge-bellows is inflated.
Congreve rocket a large rocket having a shell of sheet-iron and carrying charges of canister-shot, bullets, and other missiles. Sir William Congreve, who first introduced this weapon into warfare, and from whom its name is derived, caused sizes to be constructed ranging from 12 to 32 pounds, with sticks for the larger sizes 20 feet in length. The first notable use of Congreve rockets was at Copenhagen in 1807, and among the then-existing means of attack it proved a very formidable weapon. The composition used in these rockets is saltpeter, sulphur, and charcoal; and they sometimes have a metal head loaded with a bursting-charge very destructive in a fortress or town. Modern improvements in ordnance have supplied more efficient means of attack, and rockets are now used in warfare chiefly as a means for signaling.

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Examples (46)

The formula for determining the acceleration of a rocket is about as simple as a formula can be. — OCTOBER, 1953 Vol
The time machine and the rocket are our favored icons of interest. — F ;SF; - vol 096 issue 03 - March 1999
But Mink had hired a Savant, and this rocket was her invention. — F ;SF; - vol 092 issue 02 - February 1997
Yet to the layman who does not read science-fiction, a rocket is a Buck Rogers gadget, impossible and ridiculous. — ASTOUNDING
Japan has deployed warships with anti-missile systems off the coast, set up Patriot missile interceptors and established a system to warn residents when the rocket is approaching. — KTVB.com Local News

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missile · jet · grenade · aircraft · torpedo · projectile · cannon · laser · shuttle · vehicle · weapon · motor

Roget's II: The New Thesaurus, Third Edition by the Editors of the American Heritage® Dictionary. Copyright © 2003, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

Etymologies (6)

American Heritage Dictionary (2)

Italian rocchetta, diminutive of rocca, spindle, distaff, of Germanic origin.
Middle English rokette, from Old French roquette, from Italian rochetta, variant of ruchetta, diminutive of ruca, a kind of cabbage, from Latin ērūca.

Century Dictionary (4)

= Dutch raket = German rakete = Danish Swedish raket = French roquet, roquette, racquette (later Spanish raquete), from Old Italian rocchetto (Middle Latin rochetus, rocheta), a rocket, so named from its shape, literally ‘a bobbin,’ Italian rocchetto, a bobbin (rochetta, a distaff) (= French rochet, roquet, a bobbin), diminutive of rocca, a distaff: see rock.
from rocket, n.
Early modern English rokat; from Old French roquette, French roquette = Spanish roqueta, ruqueta, from Italian ruchetta, the herb rocket, diminutive of ruca, garden-rocket, from Latin eruca, a species of colewort: see Eruca.
Origin not ascertained.

rocket

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