飛行
Meaning in Englishaviation, flight
Animated kanji stroke order
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Word context
What it means
飛行 (hikou) means 'flight' or 'flying' — the act or process of moving through the air; it describes airborne movement as a state or operation, commonly applied to aircraft, birds, missiles, or any object/person that travels in airspace.
Main meanings
- Technical operation of aircraft and air vehicles, referring to scheduled or controlled flights.
- Biological or natural flight, describing how animals or insects move through air.
- Engineering and testing sense, used for flight tests, flight time and performance evaluations.
- Figurative or metaphorical use to describe rapid or free movement, often in literature or journalism.
How to use it
Used mainly as a noun and as a verbal noun with the suru-verb in formal and technical contexts such as aviation reports, engineering documents, news coverage and military records; in casual conversation speakers may use it when talking about flights or flying in general, and it frequently appears as the root in compound terms related to flight operations and measurements.
Variants and close terms
- 飛翔 (ひしょう, hishō) — soaring, flight (emphasis on soaring or upward motion)
- 飛ぶ (とぶ, tobu) — to fly (verb form, describes the action rather than the nominal concept)
- 航空 (こうくう, kōkū) — aviation, air transport (closely related but emphasizes air transport systems)
- 着陸 (ちゃくりく, chakuriku) — landing (antonym in the context of air operations)
Composition
- 飛 (hi) = to fly, leap; indicates airborne motion or flight.
- 行 (kō) = to go, to move; denotes movement or action in compounds.
- Combined, the characters convey the idea of the action or movement of flying — literally the "going" or motion through the air.
Origin
As a concept tied to modern aviation, the specific usage of the compound in everyday Japanese expanded during the Meiji and Taishō eras with the introduction of Western aircraft technology; newspapers, military documents and emerging civil aviation vocabulary adopted the term to describe powered and organized air travel in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
Word class
noun, verbal noun (suru-verb) (名詞, サ変名詞)