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Well, I've always referred tho these as jet streams or jet trails, and never realized there was a specific term/word for it until someone mentioned it on The Weather Channel today while pointing out that contrails now account for a measurable percentage of the cloud cover. Only got one hit on OneLook, so here it is...has anybody heard this before. And, since there's no date of origin, can anybody pinpoint a time of coinage? Perhaps it was used in the official aviation lingo from the introduction of jet aircraft? But the lack of documentation would seem to suggest it's coinage is fairly recent. The etymology is pretty simple: condensation plus trail = contrail:
from the American Heritage dictionary
con·trail (kntrl) n. A visible trail of streaks of condensed water vapor or ice crystals sometimes forming in the wake of an aircraft. Also called vapor trail.
------------------------------------------------------------[con(densation) trail.]
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old hand
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old hand
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Main Entry:con£trail Pronunciation:*k*n-*tr*l Function:noun Etymology:condensation trail Date:1943
: streaks of condensed water vapor created in the air by an airplane or rocket at high altitudes ---------- ©M-W
Having been around plane nuts most of my life, I am genuinely surprised that anyone could be unfamiliar with this word.
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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>Only got one hit on OneLook
try the singular form, Juan.
1945 Sat. Even. Post Jan. 18 With no wind and intense cold, taxiing planes leave ice-crystal contrails behind them, just as Fortresses do at 30,000 feet over Germany. 1952 M. Tripp Faith is Windsock White aircraft contrails feathered against azure blue. 1960 People Nov. 9/2 The boffins' name for aeroplane clouds is ‘contrails’. 1965 R. Heinlein Farnham's Freehold No sign.. of man—not a building, a road, a path, no contrails in the sky.
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veteran
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Also called vapor trail.
I may have heard "contrails" mentioned, but the word never really registered - implying that I heard it in a technical context, of little use to an ordinary bod like yours truly.
I've always called them "vapour trails".
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Pooh-Bah
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Pooh-Bah
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I think that, so far as UKn's are concerned, "contrail" is a fairly technical term. I first heard it as a member of the Royal Observer Corps, back in the late 50s, and my wife was familiar with the term from her work for BOAC (the direct descendant of Imperial Airways!) so it was well understood in our household. However, I have had to explain the word to other people from time to time, whereas "vapour trails" is reasonably self-explanatory.
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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Dear faldage: thanks for that link. There was in incident in WWII in which a large fleet of American bombers whose mission was to destroy oilfields at Ploesti Rumania missed their target by hundreds of miles. The colonel in command was courtmartialed and punished severely. Not for quite a few years later was it discovered that the jetstream, unknown of at the time had caused the error. But it was discovered too late to exhonorate the poor colonel.
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Carpal Tunnel
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I've always called them vapor trails, though I know the term contrail, but that always sounded more like the name of a business to me. I think it's a train or trucking company... growing up in South Dakota, the sky was always full of vapor trails, and I remember fondly the sonic booms of jets going over, breaking the sound barrier. I've grown up with a love of large, physical sounds; built a screen porch just so I can sit outside during thunderstorms listening to the sound reverberate around the hills of my Vermont home.
formerly known as etaoin...
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I've grown up with a love of large, physical sounds; built a screen porch just so I can sit outside during thunderstorms listening to the sound reverberate around the hills of my Vermont homeNice one, eta. Yes, thunder in the hills is something else, even if they're teeny hills like the South Downs
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Carpal Tunnel
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Thanks for the date references sjm and tsuwm.
1965 R. Heinlein Farnham's Freehold No sign.. of man—not a building, a road, a path, no contrails in the sky.
Believe that's one Heinlein I missed...but even if I read it (I've always religiously kept a dictionary handy to look up new words I encounter), like Shona said, for some reason the word didn't "stick' with me.
jet stream
Sure, Faldage...meterology is one of my passions, and I'm a Weather Channel nut and hurricane aficionado. But I've always used jet streams as the first choice to describe vapor trails, and that's the term I recall most other folks using, too...could it be a regional thing?
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