forced landing
- noun
- /fɔrst ˈlændɪŋ/
- Specialized
- After detecting a problem with the aircraft, the flight crew executed a forced landing at the nearest airport.
- make a forced landing
- plane made a forced landing
Examples
-
Our people know we made a forced landing.
-
Bad country for a forced landing.
-
We made a forced landing in Anderson's farm.
-
I had to make a forced landing in a mud puddle.
-
A forced landing once occurred on a mile-long nameless island west of Jamaica.
Fiction book (1996) -
The pilot had to make a forced landing due to engine failure.
-
During bad weather, the small plane made an emergency forced landing in a field.
Synonyms
A plane landing that happens because of a sudden problem like engine failure or bad weather
A landing made when a plane has no engine power
Antonyms
How Urgent
Surface Forms
Morphology
The meaning is directly built from 'forced' (caused by necessity/compulsion) + 'landing' (act of descending onto a surface), so a B1 learner who knows both words can infer it refers to a landing made because circumstances forced it (i.e., an emergency or unscheduled landing). This adjective+noun composition is regular and cross-linguistically transparent, so the overall sense is predictable from the parts.
Etymology
The phrase forced landing comes from the literal image that something forced the plane to land, for example engine failure or bad weather. So, today forced landing means 'an unexpected landing because of something the pilot could not control'.