Other forms: antennas
An antenna is the metal rod or wire that catches radio and television signals from the air. A car antenna, a satellite antenna, adjust the antenna.
This is chiefly the American word; British English says aerial for the household kind and antenna in technical and scientific contexts. The plural is antennas for the metal kind. An antenna is also an insect's feeler, and there the plural is antennae. Note that the two plurals are used deliberately to separate the senses, and that a phone's antenna is now inside the case where nobody sees it.
1nounantennaA rod or wire that catches radio and television signals.
“The antenna on the roof has been bent since the storm.”
synonyms: aerial
2nouninsectsAn insect's feeler.
“The antenna picks up scent from a considerable distance.”
antenna is a receiving rod or feeler.
Also accepted in games: aerial
Latin antenna meant a ship's yardarm — the horizontal spar carrying a sail. Renaissance naturalists borrowed it for insects' feelers because of the shape, and radio engineers borrowed it again for the same reason.
Proto-Indo-European
*h₂ent-
Latin
antenna — yard, sailyard; pole
English, today
antenna
Latin antenna (“yard, sailyard; pole”). First used in this sense as a Latin word in the 15th century and as an English word by the end of the 17th century.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA