🙄 To belittle 🛬 To guide landing

to talk down

1 7.9

To guide a plane to land by giving radio instructions

phrasal verb
/tɔk daʊn/

Jargon

: dirigir el aterrizaje por radio

Examples

You ain't got to talk down to me.

Losing Isaiah (1995)
But Arik Sharon had "talked down" a Dakota bearing medical supplies and stretchers for the wounded, and now they were arriving one after the other in the small hours to evacuate the casualties: more than a hundred found so far, more than thirty of them dead.

Fiction book (1993)
Captain Glenn Quagmire is successfully talking down the plane, guiding it safely to the runway.
In the tense standoff, the negotiator focused on talking down the armed suspect to ensure a peaceful resolution.
The air traffic controller instructed the pilot while talking down the aircraft during the emergency landing.

Surface Forms

talk down infinitive

talked down past

talked down past participle

talking down present participle

talks down third person singular

Morphology

talk + down

There is a clear link between 'talk' (speak) and 'down' (lower), so the idea of using speech to cause or guide a descent is partially derivable; however, the specific technical sense of directing an aircraft's landing by radio is specialised and not fully predictable for a B1 learner. Additionally, the verb 'talk down' has other idiomatic senses (e.g. persuade someone not to jump; speak condescendingly), which increases ambiguity and means prior exposure or context is typically required.

Etymology

Talk down paints the picture of an air controller using words to bring a plane lower, with the talk guiding the aircraft down step by step. That's why it means 'to guide a plane safely to the ground by radio'.