rotor

UK/ˈɹəʊ.tə/US/ˈɹoʊ.tɚ/

nounB2+Occasional — familiar, but not everyday · #10,802 of 15,258leans written

Other forms: rotors

A rotor is the spinning part of a machine or aircraft. The main rotor, a rotor blade, the rotor spun up.

In a helicopter the main rotor lifts and the tail rotor stops the body spinning the other way, which is what the tail is for. In an electric motor the rotor turns inside the stator, which stays put — the two names describe exactly that difference.

Definitions of rotor

1nounrotorThe spinning part of a machine or aircraft.B2+
“The helicopter's rotor began to spin, and dust blew everywhere.”

rotor is a part.

Where it comes from

A shortening of rotator, from Latin rotare, to turn, from rota, a wheel.

From an irregular a clipping of rotator, originally in mathematics, coined by Q323228 based on vector, see quotations. a doublet of rota and ruote.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practised in Word Building

Practise this word

rotor in the wild

The Wankel engine's rotor is similar in shape to a Reuleaux triangle, with the sides having less curvature.
Wankel engine
The midpoint of the rotor moves in a circle around the output shaft, rotating the shaft via a cam.
Wankel engine
Burke Wilford, who developed the Reiseler-Kreiser feathering-rotor-equipped gyroplane in the first half of the twentieth century.
Autogyro
For vertical flight, the rotors are angled so the plane of rotation is horizontal, generating lift the way a normal helicopter rotor does.
Tiltrotor
As the aircraft gains speed, the rotors are progressively tilted forward, with the plane of rotation eventually becoming vertical.
Tiltrotor

1 / 3

From Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. These sentences were written by other people about their own subjects; they are here to show the word at work, not as anybody’s opinion.

← Vocabulary