airportn.2
/ˈɛːpɔːt/, U.S. /ˈɛrˌpɔrt/ A place where civil aircraft may land in order to discharge and receive passengers, refuel, or undergo maintenance; (in early use) a town or city where such a facility is located; (now esp.) a complex of runways and buildings for this purpose, with facilities for passengers.In quot. 1921: a landing place for a seaplane.
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society > travel > air or space travel > airfield or airport > [noun] > airport
airport1902
1902 Brooklyn Daily Eagle 10 Apr. 1/2 I hope New York will be the greatest airport in the world.
1914 Times 16 Mar. 5/3 The time will come when, with the development of aviation, every town of importance will need an air-port as it now needs a railway station.
1921 Aeronautics 19 May 351/2 It was the first occasion on which the Thames had been used as an air port for a machine from abroad.
1934 Jrnl. Royal Aeronaut. Soc. 38 508 Vertical flight would enable air travellers to take off from the centre of the city for transfer to air liners at the outlying airports.
1958 Life 10 Nov. 114/1 The advent of the jets has so far produced plenty of headaches. The big planes require longer runways than most airports now have.
1984 A. Oakley Taking it like Woman (1985) 97 Here she is walking interminably back and forth between the terminals..of the largest, most horrendous airport in the world.
2006 N.Y. Times Mag. 10 Dec. 32 Traditionally, of course, airports have served cities, but in the past few years airports have started to become cities unto themselves.
Compounds
C1.
a. General attributive.
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1926 N.Y. Times 10 Feb. 34/5 Most of the evening's meeting was devoted to discussion of a commercial airport terminal for the metropolitan district.
1929 Times 19 Mar. 16/5 A motor-cycle policeman..had notified the airport officials of the impending fall.
1933 Jrnl. Royal Aeronaut. Soc. 37 22 Another important feature of night lighting is the airport beacon, usually of the rotating or flashing type, and mounted upon the terminal building.
1953 W. W. Tomlinson There is no End ii. 35 The day I left Berlin Otto drove me to the airline office where we sat together awaiting the departure of the airport bus.
1966 J. Porter Sour Cream xii. 162 There was no percentage in hanging around the airport terminus. I had to get away.
1986 J. Nagenda Seasons of T. Tebo ii. i. 51 To this day the evening was in his very nostrils: the bleak little airport lounge,..the wet hot air.
1990 Independent 29 Sept. 22/3 Europe's deregulators..have looked at proposals that will guarantee landing slots and airport gates to all carriers.
2004 N.Y. Times 19 Sept. ii. 29/2 At this moment in America's history, it seems, airport security is not a laughing matter.
b. attributive. Designating a work of popular fiction of a type commonly sold in airports as suitable for in-flight reading, and typically regarded as light or undemanding entertainment; designating a writer of this type of fiction. Cf. railway novel n. at railway n. Compounds 2.
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society > leisure > the arts > literature > a written composition > [adjective] > trivial or inferior
penny-a-line1828
penny-a-lining1842
toshy1902
gloppy1976
airport1979
society > leisure > the arts > literature > writer or author > [adjective] > writing trivial or inferior work
scribbling1569
airport1992
1979 Washington Post 14 Oct. (Bk. World section) 5/1 Something more than another airport thriller.
1988 N. Postman Conscientious Objections 54 Reading for distraction—which is what makes the airport book so popular.
1992 Chicago Tribune (Nexis) 5 June c The reigning king of airport novelists, specializing in a kind of suspense fiction meant to be read by tired businessmen taking the red-eye.
2002 Afr. Business Apr. 60/3 In some ways this book is quite conventional—it has the feel of a popular airport novel, promising to occupy a reader entertainingly and undemandingly.
C2.
airport art n. (a) art displayed at an airport; (b) depreciative ethnic art or craft of a type displayed and sold at some airports, viewed dismissively as being copied or mass-produced for the tourist market.
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1940 N.Y. Times 9 July 17/3 (headline) WPA tears down ‘red’ airport art.
1963 Times 26 Feb. 14/4 These are original productions in a different category from the ‘airport art’.., the repetition of ancient motifs and manufacture of souvenirs for the tourist trade.
1994 Herald (Glasgow) (Nexis) 24 Feb. 9 Airport art. Young artists..are being asked to provide murals to brighten up Prestwick Airport.
1998 Independent (Nexis) 16 May 3 Authenticity is all-important in this market, which, with the advent of tourism, is bedevilled by contemporary batch-produced ‘airport art’.
airport tax n. a tax or charge levied to support the cost of building or operating an airport, now esp. in the form of a surcharge added to the price of a commercial airline ticket.
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1929 Decatur (Illinois) Daily Rev. 31 Jan. 6 (headline) Bills for airport tax and state police are presented.
1957 J. Morris Market of Seleukia iii. xx. 188 That will be two dinars airport tax, thank you.
1989 Which? July 320/3 Many brochures have offers like ‘two weeks from £89’ to tempt you—but then you find that all the extras, like airport tax, bump up the price.
2007 Internat. Herald Tribune (Nexis) 7 Sept. 20 Extra charges, such as fuel surcharges, and airport taxes, often add up to more than the price of the ticket.
This entry has been updated (OED Third Edition, June 2008; most recently modified version published online December 2021).
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