entry
plane
/pleɪn/Flat surface, level, aircraft, or smoothing tool
From Latin, ultimately Proto-Indo-European plane (flat).
from PIE *pla-no- (source also of Lithuanian plonas "thin;" Celtic *lanon "plain;" perhaps also Greek pelanos...
from Latin planum "flat surface, plane, level, plain," noun use of neuter of adjective planus "flat, level, even,...
+1 more sourcefrom Late Latin plāna (“planing tool”).
from Middle English plane, plaine
Word Ancestry
from PIE *pla-no- (source also of Lithuanian plonas "thin;" Celtic *lanon "plain;" perhaps also Greek pelanos...
from Latin planum "flat surface, plane, level, plain," noun use of neuter of adjective planus "flat, level, even,...
+1 more sourcefrom Late Latin plāna (“planing tool”).
from Middle English plane, plaine
Picture a Roman looking across a perfectly level patch of ground and calling it plānus—flat, even, plain. Latin turned that adjective into plānum, literally “the flat thing,” and centuries later English borrowed plane for geometry, partly to keep the mathematical sense apart from plain. The family has some wonderfully unexpected relatives: explain originally meant to “flatten out” an idea so the mind could see it clearly, while Spanish llano and Italian piano preserve the same flat-and-level ancestry. A plane was also a carpenter’s tool for shaving wood into a smooth surface, so the word moved from landscape to geometry to workshop. And then, in modern popular culture, Samuel L. Jackson’s furious snake-filled aircraft transformed “plane” into the setting for one of cinema’s most memorable exclamations—proof that even a word meaning “flat surface” can end up airborne.
The Story
Picture a Roman looking across a perfectly level patch of ground and calling it plānus—flat, even, plain. Latin turned that adjective into plānum, literally “the flat thing,” and centuries later English borrowed plane for geometry, partly to keep the mathematical sense apart from plain. The family has some wonderfully unexpected relatives: explain originally meant to “flatten out” an idea so the mind could see it clearly, while Spanish llano and Italian piano preserve the same flat-and-level ancestry. A plane was also a carpenter’s tool for shaving wood into a smooth surface, so the word moved from landscape to geometry to workshop. And then, in modern popular culture, Samuel L. Jackson’s furious snake-filled aircraft transformed “plane” into the setting for one of cinema’s most memorable exclamations—proof that even a word meaning “flat surface” can end up airborne.
Modern Usage
A humorous reference to the snake-filled aircraft in Samuel L. Jackson’s memorable quote
Popularized by: Samuel L. Jackson
Notable References
- Snakes on a Plane
Kin & Kindred
From 'plane'·flat, level, spread out
Derived Terms
English words from this root
Sources
Free Dictionary
Urban Dictionary
Wiktionary