wingtip

nounB2+Rare in speech; mostly a word you read · #14,073 of 15,258leans written

Other forms: wingtips

The wingtip is the very end of an aircraft wing. Clip a wingtip, wingtip lights, the wingtip vortex.

It is where the swirling wake begins, and the upturned winglets on modern aircraft exist to cut that vortex and save fuel. Aircraft must keep a distance behind each other on landing for exactly that reason.

Definitions of wingtip

1nounwingtipThe very end of an aircraft wing.B2+
“From my window seat, I watched the wingtip bounce slightly in the turbulence.”

wingtip is a part.

Where it comes from

Wing plus tip, from the plain description of the end of the wing.

From wing + tip.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practised in Airport & Flying

Practise this word

wingtip in the wild

The wingspan (or just span) of a bird or an airplane is the distance from one wingtip to the opposite wingtip.
Wingspan
Induced drag is also reduced when the wingspan is higher, or for wings with wingtip devices.
Lift-induced drag
A wing tip (or wingtip) is the part of the wing that is most distant from the fuselage of a fixed-wing aircraft.
Wing tip
In lower speed aircraft, the effect of the wingtip shape is less apparent, with only a marginal performance difference between round, square, and Hoerner style tips.
Wing tip
When the wingtips stall, both the lift and the associated nose-down pitching moment rapidly diminish.
Wing fence

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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.

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