heat-seeking missile
4
5.0
- noun
- /hiːtˈsiːkɪŋ ˈmɪsəl/
- Specialized
:
misil guiado por calor
- A heat-seeking missile came from somewhere behind him, zeroed in on some red-hot oxy vamp armor, and blew up.
- fired a heat-seeking missile
- heat-seeking missile locked on target
- two heat-seeking missiles
And their little bird gets blown right out of the sky right above me by a heat seeking missile that Delta doesn't know what the fuck to do.
- And their little bird gets blown right out of the sky right above me by a heat seeking missile that Delta doesn't know what the fuck to do.
- The more you focus on where you want to be, the more your mind, like a heat seeking missile, takes you to where you want to be.
- No, like a heat seeking missile, it arcs towards the person who was viewed as the one who activated the shame.
Examples
-
A heat-seeking missile locked on target.
Fiction book (1996) -
Sir, the F-16 is armed with heat-seeking missiles.
-
The tiny, heat-seeking missile identified two different heat sources, and true to its programming, chose the stronger of the two.
Fiction book (1991) -
Tamalko banked left, heading south, keeping his engines out of afterburner to avoid attracting any heat-seeking missiles or optically guided guns.
Fiction book (1991) -
The jet pilot fired a heat-seeking missile to target enemy aircraft.
-
Modern U.S. warplanes are designed to evade enemy radar and heat-seeking missiles.
-
Pentagon officials confirmed that the North Koreans had developed heat-seeking missiles capable of tracking aircraft.
Surface Forms
Morphology
heat-seeking + missile
The phrase is directly compositional: 'heat-seeking' means seeking or homing in on heat and combined with 'missile' yields a missile that homes in on heat sources (e.g., aircraft engines). This is a regular, interpretable compound and parallels constructions in many languages, so a B1 learner who knows the constituent words can infer the meaning.
Etymology
Heat-seeking missile comes from what the weapon does: it senses heat and keeps seeking it, 'following' the warm engine exhaust of a plane. So the name means a missile that finds and chases heat to hit its target.