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nacelle

From Wiktionary, the free dictionary

English

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WOTD – 24 May 2023

Etymology

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PIE word
*néh₂us
The nacelle (sense 1.1) or gondola of the Hindenburg airship.
The nacelle (sense 1.2) of a Boeing 737-400 aircraft housing one of its engines.
The box-shaped nacelle (sense 2.3) of a wind turbine.
The headlamp of a Douglas Dragonfly motorcycle is housed in a nacelle (sense 2.5).

Borrowed from French nacelle (“rowing boat, skiff; gondola (of a hot-air balloon, etc.); structure on an aircraft to house an engine”), Middle French nacelle (“rowing boat, skiff”), from Old French nacele, from Late Latin naucella, nāvicella (“small boat or ship”), from Latin nāvis (“a ship”) (from Proto-Indo-European *néh₂us (“a boat”)) + -ella (diminutive suffix).[1]

Cognates

Pronunciation

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Noun

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nacelle (plural nacelles)

  1. (aviation)
    2. The compartment that holds passengers on a dirigible, hot-air balloon, or other aerostat; a gondola.
    4. A separate streamlined enclosure mounted on an aircraft to house, originally, an engine, and now also cargo or crew.
    5. (archaic) The cockpit of an aircraft.
  2. (by extension)
    1. A hollow boat-shaped structure.
    2. An enclosure housing machinery or a motor.
    4. (electrical engineering) The part between the rotor and tower of a wind turbine.
    5. (nautical) The submersed providers of buoyancy of a SWATH-hulled boat.
    7. (road transport) A streamlined enclosure on the body or dashboard of a motor vehicle.

Translations

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streamlined enclosure on the body or dashboard of a motor vehicle

References

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  1. ^ “nacelle, n.”, in OED Online Paid subscription required⁠, Oxford: Oxford University Press, March 2023; “nacelle, n.”, in Lexico, Dictionary.com; Oxford University Press, 2019–2022.

Further reading

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French

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Etymology

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Inherited from Old French nacele (“small boat”), from Late Latin navicella, diminutive of Latin navis (“boat”). Doublet of navicelle.

Pronunciation

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Noun

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nacelle f (plural nacelles)

  1. (literary) skiff, wherry (small flat-bottomed rowing boat)
    • 1857, Gustave Flaubert, Madame Bovary […] ‎[1], Paris: Michel Lévy Frères; republished as Eleanor Marx, transl., Madame Bovary, 1886:
      Ce n'étaient qu'amours, amants, amantes, dames persécutées s'évanouissant dans des pavillons solitaires, postillons qu'on tue à tous les relais, chevaux qu'on crève à toutes les pages, forêts sombres, troubles du coeur, serments, sanglots, larmes et baisers, nacelles au clair de lune, rossignols dans les bosquets, messieurs braves comme des lions, doux comme des agneaux, vertueux comme on ne l'est pas, toujours bien mis, et qui pleurent comme des urnes.
      They were all love, lovers, sweethearts, persecuted ladies fainting in lonely pavilions, postilions killed at every stage, horses ridden to death on every page, sombre forests, heart-aches, vows, sobs, tears and kisses, little skiffs by moonlight, nightingales in shady groves, “gentlemen” brave as lions, gentle as lambs, virtuous as no one ever was, always well dressed, and weeping like fountains.
  2. gondola (of hot-air balloon etc.)
  3. pod (of spacecraft)
  4. cradle, carrycot
  5. ellipsis of nacelle élévatrice (“cherry picker, aerial work platform”)
    • 2025 October 19, Laurent Nuñez, quotee, “Le Louvre victime d’un « braquage » et fermé pour la journée ; des bijoux d’une « valeur inestimable » dérobés”, in Le Monde‎[2], sourced from AFP:
      Les malfaiteurs « ont pénétré par l’extérieur en utilisant une nacelle, qui était positionnée sur un camion », avant de fracturer la fenêtre de la galerie d’Apollon et de se diriger « vers un certain nombre de vitrines où ils ont dérobé des bijoux dont je ne donnerai pas la liste », a expliqué Laurent Nuñez sur France Inter.
      (please add an English translation of this quotation)

Derived terms

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Descendants

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  • → English: nacelle

Further reading

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