飛行機
Meaning in Englishairplane
Animated kanji stroke order
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Word context
What it means
飛行機 (hikouki) means an airplane: a powered, fixed‑wing vehicle designed to carry passengers or cargo through controlled flight, commonly used in Japanese to refer to conventional planes from small private craft to large commercial jets.
Main meanings
- Specifically denotes fixed‑wing, heavier‑than‑air aircraft rather than rotary‑wing craft like helicopters.
- Used broadly in everyday language to mean any 'plane' regardless of size or role, from private light aircraft to scheduled airliners.
- Found in compound terms describing plane‑related phenomena or events, such as 飛行機雲 (hikoukigumo) for contrail or 飛行機事故 (hikouki jiko) for airplane accident.
How to use it
Used in everyday conversation, travel contexts and news reporting to refer to planes; in casual speech people commonly say it when discussing flights or airports, while technical documents and industry publications may prefer the more formal term for aircraft; it appears on signage, timetables and broadcast announcements and is appropriate in both neutral and polite registers.
Variants and close terms
- 航空機 (koukuuki) — aircraft (more formal/technical)
- ヒコーキ (hikooki) — katakana colloquialism used in casual or childlike speech
- 飛行機雲 (hikoukigumo) — contrail (related compound)
- ヘリコプター (herikoputaa) — helicopter (different type of aircraft, not a synonym)
Composition
- 飛 (hi) — to fly or flight; expresses motion through the air.
- 行 (kou) — to go, to travel; indicates movement or going.
- 機 (ki) — machine, device; denotes mechanical apparatus.
- Together the characters convey the idea of a 'machine for flying'—literally a flying machine, which maps to the modern airplane.
Origin
The concept and term became common in Japan during the late Meiji to Taishō modernization period when powered flight technology from the West arrived in the early 20th century; as military and civil aviation developed before and after World War I, the word entered standard vocabulary for describing aircraft and air transport.
Word class
noun (名詞)