barrage balloon
noun
Simple meaning
A tethered balloon, attached to the ground with a metal cable, intended to deter low-flying enemy aircraft.
Pronunciation
Say it like this:
berahzhbuhloonSay the bold part a little louder.
IPA pronunciation (US)
bɚˈɑʒbəˈlun
This word is pronounced essentially the same in American and British English, so one transcription covers both.
IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) is a standard way of writing speech sounds.
Definition
Everyday modern meanings first, grouped by part of speech.
noun
historicalmilitary
A tethered balloon, attached to the ground with a metal cable, intended to deter low-flying enemy aircraft; used especially in World War II.
Word Aura™
How this word commonly comes across.
This meaning: A tethered balloon, attached to the ground with a metal cable, intended to deter low-flying enemy aircraft; used especially in World War II.
Used this way, barrage balloon is an older-sounding word with a clearly unfavourable pull. This is a military use: it belongs to service and operational language.
- Emotional tone
- Negative
- Formality
- Specialist/technical
- Intensity
- Moderate
- How common
- Dated
- Connotation
- Old-fashioned
- Usage feel
- Dated in modern speech
Where it naturally appears
- Military
- Historical writing
- News/reporting
- Literature/storytelling
Usage note
This meaning still makes sense to most readers, but it sounds a generation behind current usage.
Word Aura describes common impressions, not a measurement. Tone changes with sentence, speaker, relationship and situation.
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Dictionary data from Wiktionary via the Free Dictionary API (CC BY-SA 3.0). Simple meanings, combinations and word intelligence are built from verified reference data, no AI is used to load this page.