air force
- noun
- /ɛr fɔrs/
- I'm a captain in the United States Air Force.
- air force base
- U.S. air force
- air force plane
So imagine what we pay the Air Force to do, OK?
- So imagine what we pay the Air Force to do, OK?
- Pease used to be an Air Force Base Stratcom.
- And we have one Air Force crew guy that's on our team.
- They shot and killed a an Air Force tech Sergeant Ronald Stewart.
- Bose Bose name card says US Air Force, that's true.
- What happens is that the Air Force looks at it and says ain't ours.
- And then I get assigned somebody from the Air Force who is combat camera.
- And who was the captain at the Malmstrom Air Force Base with the Minuteman?
- I got into the Air Force because I was it.
- When that movie came out, the the application rate for the Air Force skyrocketed.
- You cannot use only Air Force in those places.
- Who's going to get the next award for, you know, the next Air Force aircraft, right?
- It's genuinely a real Air Force smoke visor.
- He came back, he wound up in in Vandenberg Air Force Base, which is Santa Barbara.
Examples
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The Air Force conducted an aerial operation to support ground troops.
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My daddy was in the air force.
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So imagine what we pay the Air Force to do, OK?
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The top pilot in the Air Force.
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Massive attacks carried out by the U.S. Air Force had destroyed tens of thousands of trees.
Academic text (1990) -
So you're in the Air Force for six years, is that right?
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Flight Control, this is Air Force One declaring emergency.
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We're here at Vandenberg Air Force Base...
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Without a modern navy and air force, Mao was in no position to challenge the United States.
Academic text (1999) -
The Air Force issued a solicitation for the operation and maintenance of Thule Air Force Base, located in Greenland.
Academic text (2017)
How Big
- Jargon
- Specialized
- Specialized
- Jargon
Surface Forms
Morphology
The meaning 'branch of the military that conducts operations in the air' is directly and compositionally derived from 'air' (relating to aviation) + 'force' (a trained military group). This is a productive noun-noun compound with clear cross-linguistic parallels (e.g. French 'armée de l'air', Spanish 'fuerza aérea'), so a B1 learner who knows both constituents would readily infer the MWE's meaning.
Etymology
Air force comes from the words air (the sky) and force (a group of soldiers). When countries put planes together as a military group to 'fight from the sky', they called that group an air force, so today it means the part of the military that operates in the air.