reconnaissance plane
3
6.5
- noun
- /rɪˈkɒnɪsəns pleɪn/
- Specialized
:
avión de reconocimiento
- Heavy overcast would prevent reconnaissance planes from directing naval bombardment.
- U.S. reconnaissance plane
Examples
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Last week, a reconnaissance plane captured images of the enemy's military base.
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In April 2001, soon after a Chinese fighter jet and a U.S. EP-3 reconnaissance plane collided, it became apparent that the Chinese military was not fully disclosing what it knew about the incident.
Academic text (2007) -
Our reconnaissance planes report it.
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- What are our reconnaissance planes reporting?
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By October, another device had entered the skies, a new American reconnaissance plane so secret that Capitol Hill did not know about it.
Fiction book (1994) -
They got nervous when they saw a reconnaissance plane flying overhead.
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They won't be able to get their reconnaissance planes up at all.
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The collision between the U.S. Navy EP-3E reconnaissance plane and the Chinese air force F-8 jet fighter near Hainan Island on 1 April 2001 did not fundamentally color the China-Taiwan issue.
Academic text (2002) -
But at 5:05 p.m. on December 9, 2014, another unexpected guest appeared: a Russian IL-20 reconnaissance plane, which entered Estonian airspace without permission, without a flight plan, and with its transponder switched off.
Academic text (2015) -
The reconnaissance plane flew at a high altitude to gather intel on enemy movements.
How Specialized
Surface Forms
Morphology
The meaning is directly compositional: 'reconnaissance' (surveying for military intelligence) + 'plane' (aircraft) yields an aircraft used for reconnaissance, so the overall sense is predictable from the parts. This noun–noun compound follows a common, cross-linguistically familiar pattern (e.g. 'avión de reconocimiento'), making it immediately comprehensible to a learner who knows both constituents.
Etymology
Reconnaissance plane comes from the French word reconnaissance meaning 'to look closely' and the word plane for the aircraft. Imagine a plane flying high like an eye in the sky, watching the ground to find and report 'information' about enemy positions, so the name means a plane used to gather information.