anti-aircraft

See also: antiaircraft

English

From anti- +‎ aircraft.

anti-aircraft (not comparable)

(military) Intended to attack aircraft.
- 1947 January and February, “Wartime Traffic at Tanfield, L.N.E.R.”, in Railway Magazine, page 47:
  Special lamps were provided for working during the blackout, and an anti-aircraft gun, manned by the R.A.O.C., was mounted on the coal depot line.
- 2007 September 25, Bungie, Halo 3, spoken by Miranda Keyes (Justis Bolding), Microsoft Game Studios, Xbox 360, level/area: Crow's Nest:
  Truth's ships are clustered above the excavation site. And his infantry has deployed anti-aircraft batteries around the perimeter.

The hyphenated form is more common in the British corpus while the solid form is more common in the American corpus.^[1] GPO manual item 6.29. recommends to spell anti- prefixed words without a hyphen unless an overriding consideration applies.^[2]

intended to attack aircraft

anti-aircraft (countable and uncountable, plural anti-aircraft or anti-aircrafts)

(military) Anti-aircraft artillery.
- 1944 June 3, Charles A. Lindbergh, The Wartime Journals of Charles A. Lindbergh, New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, published 1970, page 839:
  I am blacking out—ease the stick forward slightly—the sky is clear again—I turn out over water—reverse turn—there are antiaircraft on the island below—I reverse again—and again.
(military) An anti-aircraft artillery organization.
(military) Anti-aircraft fire.

anti-aircraft artillery

^ antiaircraft, anti-aircraft at the Google Books Ngram Viewer.
^ 6. Compounding Rules in U.S. Government Printing Office Style Manual, govinfo.gov