From Italian rocchetta , from Old Italian rocchetto ( “ rocket ” , literally “ a bobbin ” ) , diminutive of rocca ( “ a distaff ” ) , from Lombardic 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 rock ⁴ .
A rocket ( vehicle propelled by a rocket engine ) .
rocket (plural rockets )
A projectile.
A cylindrical projectile that can be fired to a great height through combustion , ( specifically ) a type of firework of this form, typically exploding with light and colour; a skyrocket . [from 16th c.]
A blunt lance head used in jousting .
A long vehicle or craft propelled by a rocket engine; a missile or rocket-propelled spacecraft . [from 20th c.]
An engine operating similarly to the pyrotechnic, generating thrust by the expulsion of hot gases; a rocket engine . [from 20th c.]
( figurative ) Figurative uses.
Something that travels high in the air and/or with great speed ; especially ( sport ) , a hard shot . [from 20th c.]
2016 September 28, Tom English, “Celtic 3–3 Manchester City”, in BBC Sport [1] , BBC Sport :Fernandinho launched a rocket that flew just over. Gundogan's shot hit off Sviatchenko and Gordon and went out. City pressed and pressed.
( UK slang , originally military ) A severe reprimand ; a telling-off . [from 20th c.]
1973 , Elizabeth Mavor , A Green Equinox , Virago, published 2023 , page 93 :The Burmese nurse who'd gone with her was crying, for which she'd no doubt get a rocket from matron.
1980 , David Schoenbrun, Soldiers of the Night: The Story of the French Resistance , Dutton, →ISBN , page 203 :While Solborg and Lemaigre were dreaming of revolts, Donovan had learned of Solborg’s insubordination and meddling. He sent him a “rocket ” ordering him out of North Africa and back to Lisbon at once.
( slang ) An ace (the playing card ).
( Scotland , slang ) A stupid or crazy person.
2014 , Alistair Beaton, Rob Drummond, Morna Pearson, Contemporary Scottish Plays :Why were the Luddites named efter Ned Ludd? A wee rocket . A wee fucken fairy bampot. A pure hooligan, smashing stuff up. A ned. Ned Ludd.
( South East England, slang ) A very physically attractive woman.
antimatter rocket booster rocket bottle rocket chemical rocket Congreve rocket crotch rocket fission rocket fusion rocket ghost rocket hash rocket hybrid rocket life rocket liquid rocket moon rocket multiple rocket launcher nuclear-electric rocket nuclear-pulse rocket nuclear rocket nuclear-thermal rocket nuclear-thermoelectric rocket off one's rocket pion rocket pocket rocket polish one's rocket red rocket retrorocket rice rocket rockaire , rockair rocket aircraft rocket artillery rocket belt rocket booster rocket car rocket docket rocketeer rocket equation rocket festival rocket garden rocket jump rocket launcher rocket motor rocket-pack rocket pack rocket plane , rocket-plane , rocketplane rocket pod rocket propellant 1 rocket propelled grenade rocket-propelled grenade rocketry rocket science rocket scientist rocket scientist rocket ship , rocket-ship , rocketship rocket sled , rocket-sled , rocketsled rocket sonde , rocket-sonde , rocketsonde rocket stage rocket surgeon rocket surgery rocket up rockoon sea rocket skyrocket , sky-rocket , sky rocket snot rocket solid rocket sounding rocket space rocket step rocket stomp rocket thermal rocket wall-rocket wall rocket water rocket yellow rocket
rocket engine
Albanian: raketë (sq) f
Amharic: ሮኬት ( roket )
Arabic: صَارُوخ m ( ṣārūḵ )
Egyptian Arabic: صاروخ m ( ṣarūḵ )
North Levantine Arabic: صاروخ m ( ṣarūḵ )
South Levantine Arabic: صاروخ m ( ṣarūḵ )
Aragonese: codete m , codet
Armenian: հրթիռ (hy) ( hrtʻiṙ )
Asturian: cohete (ast) m
Azerbaijani: raket (az)
Belarusian: раке́та f ( rakjéta )
Bengali: রকেট (bn) ( rokeṭ ) , মাহতাব (bn) ( mahotab )
Bulgarian: раке́та (bg) f ( rakéta )
Burmese: ဒုံးပျံ (my) ( dum:pyam )
Catalan: coet (ca) m
Chinese:
Mandarin: 火箭 發動機 / 火箭 发动机 ( huǒjiàn fādòngjī )
Czech: raketa (cs) f
Danish: raket (da) c
Dutch: raket (nl) m or f
Estonian: rakett
Faroese: please add this translation if you can
Finnish: rakettimoottori (fi) , raketti (fi)
French: fusée (fr) f
Galician: foguete (gl) m
Georgian: რაკეტა ( raḳeṭa )
German: Rakete (de) f
Greek: πύραυλος (el) m ( pýravlos )
Greenlandic: please add this translation if you can
Hebrew: מָנוֹעַ (he) m ( manóa ) , רָקֶטָה (he) f ( rakéta )
Hindi: राकेट (hi) m ( rākeṭ )
Hungarian: rakéta (hu) , rakétahajtómű (hu)
Icelandic: eldflaug (is) f
Indonesian: roket (id)
Irish: roicéad
Italian: motore a razzo (it) m
Japanese: ロケット (ja) ( roketto )
Kazakh: зымыран ( zymyran )
Khmer: កាំជ្រួច (km) ( kamcruəc ) , រ៉ុកកែត ( rokkaet )
Korean: 로켓 (ko) ( roket )
Kurdish:
Northern Kurdish: roket (ku)
Kyrgyz: ракета (ky) ( raketa )
Lao: ຈະຫລວດ (lo) ( cha lūat ) , ຈະລວດ ( cha lūat ) , ຈະຣວດ ( cha rūat ) , ບັ້ງໄຟ ( bang fai )
Latin: rocheta (la) f , rucheta f , missile igneum n , radius ignifer
Latvian: raķete f
Lithuanian: raketa (lt) f
Luxembourgish: Rakéit f
Macedonian: раке́та f ( rakéta )
Malay: roket
Maltese: rokit m
Marathi: रॉकेट n ( rŏkeṭ )
Mizo: vànkhạwhthėi
Mongolian:
Cyrillic: пуужин (mn) ( puužin )
Mongolian: ᠫᠤᠤᠵᠢᠩ ( puuǰing )
Norman: fîsée f
Northern Sami: rakeahtta
Norwegian:
Bokmål: rakett m
Persian:
Iranian Persian: راکِت (fa) ( râket )
Polish: rakieta (pl) f
Portuguese: foguete (pt) m
Romanian: rachetă (ro) f
Russian: раке́та (ru) f ( rakéta )
Serbo-Croatian:
Cyrillic: ракѐта f
Roman: rakèta (sh) f
Sinhalese: රොකට් ( rokaṭ )
Slovak: raketa f
Slovene: raketa (sl) f
Spanish: motor de cohete m
Swahili: roketi (sw) class n
Swedish: raketmotor c , raket (sv) c
Tagalog: kuwitis
Tajik: ракета ( raketa )
Thai: จรวด (th) ( jà-rùuat )
Tibetan: མེ་ཤུགས་འཕུར་མདའི་འཕྲུལ་འཁོར ( me shugs 'phur mda'i 'phrul 'khor ) ( lit. fire-powered flying arrow machine )
Turkish: roket (tr) , füze (tr)
Turkmen: raketa
Ukrainian: раке́та f ( rakéta ) , раке́тний двигу́н m ( rakétnyj dvyhún )
Urdu: راکِٹ m ( rākiṭ )
Uyghur: راكېتا ( rakëta )
Uzbek: raketa (uz)
Vietnamese: động cơ tên lửa (動機𥏌焒 )
Volapük: raket
Yiddish: ראַקעט m ( raket )
military: non-guided missile
Arabic: صَارُوخ m ( ṣārūḵ ) , قَذِيفَة f ( qaḏīfa )
Egyptian Arabic: ساروخ m ( sarūḵ )
Armenian: հրթիռ (hy) ( hrtʻiṙ )
Belarusian: раке́та f ( rakjéta )
Bulgarian: раке́та (bg) f ( rakéta )
Burmese: ဒုံး (my) ( dum: )
Chinese:
Cantonese: 火箭 ( fo2 zin3 )
Mandarin: 火箭 (zh) ( huǒjiàn )
Czech: raketa (cs) f
Dutch: raket (nl) m or f
Esperanto: raketo (eo)
Finnish: raketti (fi)
French: roquette (fr) f
Georgian: რაკეტა ( raḳeṭa )
German: Rakete (de) f
Hebrew: רָקֶטָה (he) f ( rakéta ) , טִיל (he) m ( til )
Hungarian: rakéta (hu)
Italian: razzo (it) m
Japanese: 噴進弾 ( ふんしんだん, funshindan ) , ロケット (ja) ( roketto ) , ロケット弾 ( ロケットだん, roketto dan )
Khmer: រ៉ុកកែត ( rokkaet )
Korean: 로켓 (ko) ( roket ) , 로켓트 ( roket'teu ) , 미사일 (ko) ( misail )
Lao: ຈະຫລວດ (lo) ( cha lūat ) , ຈະລວດ ( cha lūat ) , ຈະຣວດ ( cha rūat )
Latin: rucheta f
Luxembourgish: Rakéit f
Macedonian: раке́та f ( rakéta )
Maltese: rokit
Marathi: रॉकेट n ( rŏkeṭ )
Norman: fîsée f
Northern Sami: rakeahtta
Norwegian:
Bokmål: rakett m
Pashto: راکټ (ps) m ( rākeṭ )
Persian:
Iranian Persian: راکِت (fa) ( râket )
Polish: rakieta (pl) f
Portuguese: foguete (pt) m
Romanian: rachetă (ro) f
Russian: раке́та (ru) f ( rakéta )
Slovene: raketa (sl) f
Spanish: cohete (es) m
Swahili: roketi (sw)
Swedish: raket (sv)
Tagalog: sikpad
Thai: จรวด (th) ( jà-rùuat )
Tibetan: འཕུར་མདའི་མཚོན་ཆ ( 'phur mda'i mtshon cha ) , འཕུར་མདའ ( 'phur mda' ) , མེ་ཤུགས་འཕུར་མདའ ( me shugs 'phur mda' ) ( lit. fire-powered flying arrow )
Turkish: roket (tr) , füze (tr)
Ukrainian: раке́та f ( rakéta )
Uyghur: راكېتا ( rakëta )
Vietnamese: tên lửa (vi) (𥏌焒 )
Welsh: roced f
Yiddish: ראַקעט m ( raket )
rocket-propelled firework
— see also skyrocket
slang: ace
— see also ace
military slang: angry communication to a subordinate
figuratively: something that shoots high in the air
rocket (third-person singular simple present rockets , present participle rocketing , simple past and past participle rocketed )
( transitive , intransitive ) To accelerate swiftly and powerfully .
2021 August 6, A. A. Dowd, “The Ryan Reynolds action-comedy Free Guy is a Truman Show for the Fortnite age”, in The A.V. Club [2] :With Free Guy , Reynolds gets just a little more in touch with his Carrey side via nothing less than his own version of The Truman Show, shorn of its daydream dread and rocketed into the age of Fortnite.
To fly vertically .
To rise or soar rapidly .
2020 May 20, Paul Bigland, “East London Line's renaissance”, in Rail , pages 48–49 :The project was attractive because of the ability to maximise the use of existing and decommissioned railways, minimise land take, and decrease the amount of disruption during the project. With London land prices rocketing , there was also a significant financial incentive.
2023 May 24, Phillip Inman, “Brexit food trade barriers have cost UK households £7bn, report finds”, in The Guardian [3] , →ISSN :The cost of food in the UK had rocketed by 25% since 2019, the researchers calculated, but if the post-Brexit trade restrictions were not in place then this increase would be only 17% – nearly a third lower.
To experience sudden fame, popularity, or success.
After spending years in obscurity, the band finally rocketed last week.
To carry something in a rocket .
To attack something with rockets .
Borrowed from French roquette , from Italian ruchetta , diminutive of ruca , from Latin eruca . Cognate to arugula , rucola , eruca , roquette .
rocket leaf (Eruca sativa )
rocket (uncountable )
The leaf vegetable Eruca sativa or Eruca vesicaria .
Rocket larkspur (Consolida regalis , syn. Delphinium consolida ).
rocket m (plural rockets )
rocket ( weapon )