Other forms: rockets, rocketed
A rocket is a machine that burns fuel to push itself into the sky, carrying people or satellites. Launch a rocket, a rocket to the moon, the rocket lifted off.
It also means a firework of the same shape, which is the older sense and the one children meet first. As a verb, to rocket means to rise very fast — prices rocketed — and that use is common in business reporting. Two British extras: rocket is the salad leaf that American English calls arugula, and to give somebody a rocket means to tell them off severely.
1nounrocketA machine that burns fuel to push itself into space.
“The rocket carried four satellites.”
2nounfireworkA firework that flies up and bursts.
“The rockets went off over the harbour at ten.”
3verbriseTo rise very quickly.
“Prices rocketed after the announcement.”
4nounpepperyA peppery salad leaf.
“A bag of rocket and some parmesan.”
Too few real examples of this word to estimate which sense is commonest.
rocket is a machine, or a fast rise.
Italian rocchetta meant a little distaff — the stick that holds wool for spinning. The firework was named for its shape, which is a stick with a bulge at one end, and the spacecraft inherited the name from the firework. The salad leaf is an unrelated word from Latin eruca.
Italian
rocchetta
English, today
rocket
Built from
Borrowed from Italian rocchetta. From Italian rocchetta, from Old Italian rocchetto (“rocket”) literally “a bobbin”, diminutive of rocca (“a distaff”), from lng rocko (“spinning wheel”), from Proto-West Germanic rokkō, from Proto-Germanic rukkô (“a distaff, a staff with flax fibres tied loosely to it, used in spinning thread”). Cognate with Old High German rocco, rocko, roccho, rocho "a distaff"; > German Rocken (“a distaff”), Swedish rock (“a distaff”), Icelandic rokkur (“a distaff”), Middle English rocke (“a distaff”). More at rock⁴. For the meaning development, compare fuselage, ultimately from fūsus (“spindle, spinning wheel”).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA