Online dictionaryOnline dictionary
Synonyms, antonyms, pronunciation

  Home 		English Dictionary      examples: 'day', 'get rid of', 'New York Bay'




Torpedo   /tɔrpˈidˌoʊ/   Listen
noun
Torpedo  n.  (pl. torpedoes)  
1.
(Zool.) Any one of numerous species of elasmobranch fishes belonging to Torpedo and allied genera. They are related to the rays, but have the power of giving electrical shocks. Called also crampfish, and numbfish. See Electrical fish, under Electrical. Note: The common European torpedo (Torpedo vulgaris) and the American species (Torpedo occidentalis) are the best known.
2.
An engine or machine for destroying ships by blowing them up; a mine (4). Specifically:
(a)
A quantity of explosives anchored in a channel, beneath the water, or set adrift in a current, and so designed that they will explode when touched or approached by a vessel, or when an electric circuit is closed by an operator on shore; now called marine mine. (obsolete) "Damn the torpedoes full speed ahead!"
(b)
A kind of small submarine boat carrying an explosive charge, and projected from a ship against another ship at a distance, or made self-propelling, and otherwise automatic in its action against a distant ship.
3.
(Mil.) A kind of shell or cartridge buried in earth, to be exploded by electricity or by stepping on it; now called land mine. (obsolete)
4.
(Railroad) A kind of detonating cartridge or shell placed on a rail, and exploded when crushed under the locomotive wheels, used as an alarm signal.
5.
An explosive cartridge or shell lowered or dropped into a bored oil well, and there exploded, to clear the well of obstructions or to open communication with a source of supply of oil.
6.
A kind of firework in the form of a small ball, or pellet, which explodes when thrown upon a hard object.
7.
An automobile with a torpedo body. (Archaic Cant)
Fish torpedo, a spindle-shaped, or fish-shaped, self-propelling submarine torpedo.
Spar torpedo, a canister or other vessel containing an explosive charge, and attached to the end of a long spar which projects from a ship or boat and is thrust against an enemy's ship, exploding the torpedo.
Torpedo boat, a vessel adapted for carrying, launching, operating, or otherwise making use of, torpedoes against an enemy's ship., especially, a small, fast boat with tubes for launching torpedoes.
Torpedo nettings, nettings made of chains or bars, which can be suspended around a vessel and allowed to sink beneath the surface of the water, as a protection against torpedoes.


verb
Torpedo  v. t.  
1.
To destroy by, or subject to the action of, a torpedo.
2.
(Fig.) To destroy, cause to halt, or prevent from being accomplished; used esp. with reference to a plan or an enterprise, halted by some action before the plan is put into execution.





Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48


Advanced search
     Find words:
Starting with
Ending with
Containing
Matching a pattern  

Synonyms
Antonyms
Quotes
Words linked to  

only single words


Share |
Add this dictionary
to your browser search bar




"Torpedo" Quotes from Famous Books



... they. "They've discovered a young torpedo in Ray. He's quite good and they'll probably get into the final. But we needn't be afraid. They've a weak string in Johnson, while we haven't a weakness anywhere. However, we'll take no risks." And so they started a savagely ...
— Tell England - A Study in a Generation • Ernest Raymond
... electricities. 'Is it right,' he seemed to ask, 'to call this agency which I have discovered electricity at all? Are there perfectly conclusive grounds for believing that the electricity of the machine, the pile, the gymnotus and torpedo, magneto-electricity and thermo-electricity, are merely different manifestations of one and the same agent?' To answer this question to his own satisfaction he formally reviewed the knowledge of that day. He added to it new experiments of his own, ...
— Faraday As A Discoverer • John Tyndall
... an experimental ship. This ship, the Turbinia, after a considerable amount of trial and modification, attained the unprecedented speed of 341/2 knots an hour, and His Majesty's navy has possessed, in the Turbinia's younger and greater sister, the Viper, now unhappily lost, a torpedo-destroyer capable of 41 miles an hour. There can be little doubt that the sea speeds of 50 and even 60 miles an hour will be attained within the next few years. But I do not think that these developments ...
— Anticipations - Of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon - Human life and Thought • Herbert George Wells
... normal shell. Everything thinner has been punctured, and now an eighty-ton gun, to cost sixty thousand pounds, is getting ready to perforate that. There must be a stopping-point for all this somewhere. Perhaps the fate of armor afloat may soon be settled finally by the torpedo, as its efficiency on land was disposed of by the bullet, and the men-at-arms of the sea no longer lord it over hosts of wooden yeomanry. Happy the nation that can look on with its hands firmly in its pockets while others lavish their treasure in ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 17, - No. 97, January, 1876 • Various
... Holland, lacking evidence as to the perpetrator of the crime, would have had to swallow this denial but for an accident which furnished her with the missing proof. One of the Tubantia's small boats drifted ashore. In the boat was a fragment of a Schwarzkopf torpedo—a type manufactured and used only by Germany. This fragment was forwarded to Berlin, with another and more urgent demand for ...
— Fighting For Peace • Henry Van Dyke


More quotes...


Copyright © 2025 Dictionary One.com