Other forms: jets, jetted, jetting
A jet is an aircraft whose engines swallow air at the front and throw it out of the back, which is what makes them fast and what makes them loud. The white line ruled across a blue afternoon is a jet, six miles up and already somewhere else.
The older meaning is a narrow stream forced through a small opening: a jet of water off a cracked pipe, a jet of blue flame from a gas ring. Jet lag is the flat, sleepless week after flying across time zones, and the jet set are the people rich enough not to notice it. Jet is also a hard black stone, cut and polished for mourning jewellery in the nineteenth century, and that stone is the reason very dark things are called jet-black. One warning: a propeller plane is not a jet, however fast it goes.
1nounjetA fast aircraft driven by jet engines.~63%
“The jet climbed through the cloud and disappeared.”
2nounspurtA narrow stream of liquid or gas forced out of a small opening.~31%
“A jet of water hit the window and ran down it.”
3nounstoneA hard black stone, polished and used in jewellery.~4%
“The brooch was cut from jet and set in silver.”
4verbtravelTo travel somewhere by plane, or of liquid, to shoot out in a narrow stream.~2%
“Water jetted out of the broken pipe across the road.”
Shares are an estimate: a language model read 178 sentences found in the wild and placed 137 of them on a sense (41 were unclear) — a count of our sample, not a measurement of English.
The French jet meant a spurt, and literally a throw: under it sits Latin iacere, to throw, the verb behind abject and jut as well. A jet of water is water thrown, and the aircraft is the same word arriving centuries later. The black stone is not related to any of this. It came through Latin gagātēs from Greek Γαγάτης, which is named after Γάγας, a town and river in Lycia.
French
jet
English, today
jet
Built from
Borrowed from French jet. French jet (“spurt”) literally “a throw”, from Old French get, giet, from Vulgar Latin *iectus, jectus, from Latin iactus (“a throwing, a throw”), from iacere (“to throw”). See abject, ejaculate, gist, jess, jut. Cognate with Spanish echar*.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA