Other forms: planes, planing, planed
A plane is the machine with wings and engines that takes you across an ocean in a few hours. You check in, sit with your knees against the seat in front, and land somewhere with different weather. It is short for aeroplane in Britain and airplane in America.
The same four letters do other work. In maths, a plane is a perfectly flat surface stretching out in every direction — two lines meeting on a plane. In a workshop, a plane is the tool you push along a board to shave a curl of wood off it, and to plane the wood is to do that. Figuratively, something can be on a different plane, meaning a different level entirely. There is even a plane tree, the big city tree with bark that peels off in patches. Watch the verbs: you take a plane, get on a plane, fly by plane.
1nounplaneA flying machine with wings and engines.~55%
“The plane was an hour late leaving Manchester.”
synonyms: aeroplane, airplane, aircraft
2nouncompletelyA completely flat surface, in maths and drawing.~14%
“The two lines meet at a point on the same plane.”
3nounlevelA level of thought, quality or existence.~20%
“Her later work is on a different plane altogether.”
4nounhandA hand tool with a blade that shaves thin curls off wood to make it smooth.~7%
“He took a plane to the edge of the door so it would shut.”
5verbwoodTo make wood smooth with such a tool.~2%
“You will need to plane the bottom of the door by a millimetre.”
6nounlargeA large city tree with broad leaves and bark that peels off in patches.~2%
“The square is lined with plane trees.”
Shares are an estimate: a language model read 17 sentences found in the wild and placed 14 of them on a sense (3 were unclear) — a count of our sample, not a measurement of English.
plane is an aircraft.
Also accepted in games: airplane, aeroplane, aircraft
Plane comes from Latin plānum, a flat surface, the neuter of plānus, flat. English already had plain from the same Latin word, so in the 1600s writers brought plane in again to keep the geometry separate from the fields. It has other twins hiding in the language: plan, llano and piano all trace back to the same flatness.
Proto-Indo-European
*pleh₂-
Latin
plānum
English, today
plane
Built from
From Latin plānum. From Latin plānum (“flat surface”), a noun use of the neuter of plānus (“plain”). The word was introduced in the 17th century to distinguish the geometrical senses from the other senses of plain. a doublet of llano and piano and plain and plan.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA