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Parachute   Listen
noun
Parachute  n.  
1.
A device made of a piece of cloth, usually silk, attached to multiple chords fastened to a harness; when attached to a person or object falling through the air, it opens from a folded configuration into an umbrella-shaped form, thus slowing the rate of descent so that a safe descent and landing may be made through the air from an airplane, balloon, or other high point. It is commonly used for descending to the ground from a flying airplane, as for military operations (as of airborne troops) or in an emergency, or for sport. In the case of use as a sport, the descent from an airplane by parachute is called sky diving. Some older versions of parachute were more rigid, and were shaped somewhat in the form of an umbrella.
2.
(Zool.) A web or fold of skin which extends between the legs of certain mammals, as the flying squirrels, colugo, and phalangister.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Parachute" Quotes from Famous Books



... a parachute are distinct, but not different. Be not alarmed, he will get his dinner at ...
— The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Tales • Bret Harte

... out. Took part in a debate or two and then off to the North Pole in a balloon. Managed to see a good deal of snow and ice, and fancy we caught a sight of the Pole itself. Sent home (by parachute) to one of my Magazines, "How I got within Measurable Distance of ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 103, December 31, 1892 • Various

... in a fountain," said a Brown Pelican that had come sailing into Cuthbert Rookery with her wings sloped downward like a parachute. "It was the gold-seekers who filled the islands with the thunder of their guns and the ...
— The Trail Book • Mary Austin et al

... nearly all rock, against some fragments of which the stick was propped. There was no failure then. There came up a faint rasping sound as of wood over stone, as the cord tightened, and then very slowly the umbrella began, parachute-like, to rise in the air, higher and higher, as it was hauled up hand over hand till the spike touched the lower twigs ...
— Will of the Mill • George Manville Fenn

... not quite with the speed of an arrow. A moment later, tired of his flight, he sprawls his eight webbed legs out in every direction, breaking them seemingly into a thousand joints, and settles back like an animated parachute awreck. Then perchance he perches on a rock knowingly, with the appearance of owl-like wisdom, albeit his head looks surprisingly like a frog's. Anon he holds his head erect and stretches out his long arms in what is most palpably a yawn. Then, for pure diversion, he may hold himself half ...
— A History of Science, Volume 5(of 5) - Aspects Of Recent Science • Henry Smith Williams

... as a philosopher rather than an advocate, he took more rational ground, and compared the action of France to that of a parachute which retarded the fall of gold. The maximum effect of the enormous gold inflation of 1848-65 was to create a disturbance of less than five per cent. in value of the metals in countries outside of France. During all the years that the law of 1803 ...
— If Not Silver, What? • John W. Bookwalter

... four suits which he had made in his spare time, each adapted to a particular method of escape from the Skylark. The one he selected was of heavy canvas, braced with steel netting, equipped with helmet and air-tanks, and attached to a strong, heavy parachute. He put it on, tested all its parts, and made his way unobserved to one of the doors in the lower part of the vessel. Thus, when the chance for escape came, he was ready for it. As the Skylark paused over the Isthmus, his lips parted in a sardonic smile. He opened ...
— The Skylark of Space • Edward Elmer Smith and Lee Hawkins Garby

... naturalist would ever for a moment dream of doubting its close affinity to the flying squirrels of the American woodlands. It has just the same general outline, just the same bushy tail, just the same rough arrangement of colours, and just the same expanded parachute-like membrane stretching between the fore and hind limbs. Why should this be so? Clearly because both animals have independently adapted themselves to the same mode of life under the same general circumstances. Natural selection, acting upon unlike original types, but in like ...
— Falling in Love - With Other Essays on More Exact Branches of Science • Grant Allen

... would seem that the principle of the parachute was to some extent at least brought into play. If also circumstantial accounts can be credited, it would appear that a working model of a flying machine was publicly exhibited by one John Muller before the Emperor Charles V. at Nuremberg. ...
— The Dominion of the Air • J. M. Bacon

... the largest, belonging to a closely allied subgenus, is known as the "Flying Squirrel,"[1] from its being assisted in its prodigious leaps from tree to tree, by the parachute formed by the skin of the flanks, which on the extension of the limbs front and rear, is laterally expanded from foot to foot. Thus buoyed up in its descent, the spring which it is enabled to make from one lofty tree to another resembles the flight of a bird rather than the bound ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent

... had a really successful balloon ascent: the balloon ran out four miles of thread before it was released, and the instrument fell without a parachute. The searchers followed the clue about 2 1/2 miles to the north, when it turned and came back parallel to itself, and only about 30 yards distant from it. The instrument was found undamaged and with ...
— Scott's Last Expedition Volume I • Captain R. F. Scott

... us, Captain Robers," replied Winford coldly. "I am in a hurry to be on my way. Kindly move down the ladder and join your men. Your hand weapons and food supplies will be dropped by parachute as we leave. I might add that in a short time I expect to be in a position to broadcast an S O S message for you which should bring rescue ships here to ...
— The Space Rover • Edwin K. Sloat

... said the sprout. "I was in mother's head, with a heap of brothers and sisters. Each of us had a little parachute. 'Fly away now, darlings,' said mother. 'The farther away you go, the better. I can do no more for you than I have done; and I won't deny that I am a little concerned about all the children that I ...
— The Old Willow Tree and Other Stories • Carl Ewald

... wondering air grows mute, As her pearly parachute Cometh slowly down from heaven, softly floating to and fro; And the earth emits no sound, As lightly on the ground Leaps the silvery-footed Spirit of ...
— Poems • Denis Florence MacCarthy

... nylon chute again. Another thought ran through his mind. Suppose they don't spot me in the dark. When the sun—Sirius, I mean—comes up, there's a good chance they'll spot the parachute ...
— The Quantum Jump • Robert Wicks

... nodded grimly, touched a button on his desk. "Get me Air Force Chief of Staff Burns," he said, and, a moment later: "Bernie? Chuck here. We need a plane. A jet-transport to go you-know-where. Cargo? One man, in a parachute. Can you manage it? Immediately, if not sooner. Good boy, Bernie. No ... no, I'm sorry, I can't tell you a thing about it." The Secretary cut the connection, ...
— Summer Snow Storm • Adam Chase

... been killed in his fall because of a parachute which had been so arranged, unknown to him, to save him in ...
— Imperium in Imperio: A Study Of The Negro Race Problem - A Novel • Sutton E. Griggs

... descindin' fr'm th' roof in a parachute. Ye know Bertillon. Ye don't? Iv coorse ye do, Hinnissy. He's th' la-ad that invinted th' system iv ditictive wurruk med aisy that they use down in th' Cintral Polis Station. I mind wanst, afther 'twas inthrojooced, th' loot says to Andy Rohan,—he's a sergeant now, be hivins!—he ...
— Mr. Dooley: In the Hearts of His Countrymen • Finley Peter Dunne

... in seeing any cheerful, light-hearted animal reduced to silence and depression. To watch a barking, worrying, jovial puppy suddenly desist from parachute expeditions on unsteady legs, and from shaking imaginary rats, and creep, tail close at home, overcome by affliction, into obscurity, is a sad sight. Mr. Alwynn felt much the same kind of pity for Dare as he glanced at him, resignedly blighted, handsomely forlorn, who but a short time ...
— The Danvers Jewels, and Sir Charles Danvers • Mary Cholmondeley

... publication, during his life would injure his practice as a physician. It would be impossible without the aid of diagrams, and I do not remember sufficient, to explain his mechanical contrivances; but the general principle was, to suspend the man under a kind of flat parachute of extremely thin feather-edge boards, with a power of adjusting the angle at which it was placed, and allowing the man the full use of his arms and legs to work any machinery placed beneath; the area of the parachute being proportioned, as in birds to the weight ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 46, Saturday, September 14, 1850 • Various

... half as much fun as knocking down balloons. They went up with such a glorious bang! And it was delicious to watch the frightened observer tumble over the side of the basket in an effort to escape by parachute. That last one had somehow gotten fouled in the rigging and had been clawing frantically when the bag exploded. As for that, Yancey had been sorry; not for the man, but because he had wanted to see the parachute poof-op! into ...
— Aces Up • Covington Clarke

... of my plan that each in turn shall descend as in a parachute, and the balloon be drawn back by means which I shall have no difficulty in perfecting. If it will support the weight of one and let him gently down, it will have done all that is required of it. I will now show you its capacity ...
— The Lost World • Arthur Conan Doyle

... tall, of less than a foot in diameter, and rising in a straight shaft to the height of nearly a hundred feet. On the top is a splendid head of leaves like gigantic ostrich plumes, that gracefully curve over on all sides, forming a shape like a parachute. Each leaf is full five yards in length, and of the kind called pinnate—that is divided into numerous leaflets, each of which is itself more than a foot and a half long, shaped like the blade of a rapier. Under the shadow of this graceful plumage ...
— Ran Away to Sea • Mayne Reid

... of last season. Let me reckon them up. There were the horse, the bull, the parachute, - and the tumbler hanging on - chiefly by his toes, I believe - below the car. Very wrong, indeed, and decidedly to be stopped. But, in connexion with these and similar dangerous exhibitions, it strikes me that that portion of the public whom they entertain, ...
— Reprinted Pieces • Charles Dickens

... perfected a parachute device. He was taken up in a balloon to make a test of the apparatus. Arrived at a height of a thousand feet, he climbed over the edge of the basket, and dropped out. He had fallen two hundred yards when he remarked to himself, in ...
— Jokes For All Occasions - Selected and Edited by One of America's Foremost Public Speakers • Anonymous

... (penknife) Chupaflores (humming-bird) Destripaterrones (navvy) Lavamanos (wash-hand stand) Limpiabotas (boot-black) Matamoros (boaster) Mondadientes (toothpick) Papahueros (ninny) Papamoscas (ninny) Papanatas (ninny) Paracaidas (parachute) Paraguas (umbrella) Pelagatos (ragamuffin) Pintamonas (slap-dasher or bad partner) Sacacorchos (corkscrew) Salvavidas ...
— Pitman's Commercial Spanish Grammar (2nd ed.) • C. A. Toledano

... was besieged in Kut, there came to him by aeroplane not only food (in quantities sadly insufficient for his needs), but salt, saccharine, opium, drugs and surgical dressings, mails, spare parts for wireless plant, money, and a millstone weighing seventy pounds, which was dropped by means of a parachute. In the actual operations of the war the uses of aircraft, and especially of the aeroplane, were very rapidly extended and multiplied. The earliest and most obvious use was reconnaissance. To the Commander-in-Chief a detailed knowledge of the enemy's dispositions and movements is ...
— The War in the Air; Vol. 1 - The Part played in the Great War by the Royal Air Force • Walter Raleigh

... "Squirrel," from the Latin "Sciurus" and Greek "Skia-oura" means "shady tail." Thus all of its names seem to note the wonderful banner that serves the animal in turn as sun-shade, signal-flag, coverlet, and parachute. ...
— Wild Animals at Home • Ernest Thompson Seton

... hundred feet high are half a dozen huge fixed kite-balloons, with their occupants busily observing, sketching, mapping, or reporting the enemy's movements. Each of these is a target for the attacking aeroplanes and the occupants must be ready, at a moment's notice, to leap into a parachute when they are shot down. High above these balloons a score of British planes are darting about or dashing over the enemy's lines, acting as the eyes of the huge guns hidden away behind us. We are looking ...
— With Our Soldiers in France • Sherwood Eddy

... was losing elevation and was pursuing a very erratic course. Before we could reach it it lost flying speed and fell into a spinning nose dive and headed for the ground. I watched, expecting every minute to see the crew make parachute jumps, but they didn't and the plane hit the ground with ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, March 1930 • Various

... out like antenn, and serving to balance the posterior part of the body and the filaments of the abdomen during flight. On reaching a certain height they allow themselves to descend, stretching out while doing so their long wings and tail, which then serve as a parachute. Then a rapid working of these organs suddenly changes the direction of the motion, and they begin to ascend again. Coupling takes place during these aerial dances. Soon afterward the females approach the surface of the water and lay ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 385, May 19, 1883 • Various

... on, destroying it utterly before the scout had a chance to turn from the path of the titanic ship. But even as the plane spun downward, the pilot had managed to release a magnesium flare, a blindingly brilliant light that floated down on a parachute, and in the blaze of the white light it gave off, the other scouts at a few miles distance had seen the mighty bulk of the Kaxorian plane. At once they had dropped to the ground and then, by telephone lines, had sent their ...
— The Black Star Passes • John W Campbell

... and drunk of the wines of the dews of an immortal youth, and dieted on the ambrosial ether of gods, and sent his seedling offspring sailing ten thousand airy seas with the wind for master pilot and never a craft but the gypsy parachute of a seed with wings shaken out from the cones purpling to the ...
— The Freebooters of the Wilderness • Agnes C. Laut

... retains the stain longer than the larger one. The spindle in prophase (fig. 68) is much elongated and the 8 chromosomes are often spread out upon it so as to be easily counted. In the early metaphase the parachute-like heterochromosome group is always nearer one pole of the spindle (plate X, figs. 69 and 70). The equatorial plate often shows both the larger component of the pair and the plasmosome (fig. 71). Figures 72-74 show the metakinesis of the heterochromosome ...
— Studies in Spermatogenesis - Part II • Nettie Maria Stevens



Words linked to "Parachute" :   parachuting, parachute jumper, glide, drogue, parasail, ripcord, parachutist, dive, skydive, shroud, go down, fall, drogue chute, jump, plunge, descend, static line, rescue equipment, golden parachute, sky dive, parachuter, harness, drogue parachute, chute, come down, plunk



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