skyhook

English

Etymology

sky +‎ hook

Pronunciation

• enPR: skīˈ -ho͝okˌ; IPA^(key): /ˈ skaɪˌhʊk/

• Audio (Southern England)

  (file)

• Rhymes: -aɪhʊk

Noun

skyhook (plural skyhooks)

1. A hook imagined to be suspended in midair.
   • 1995, Daniel Dennett, Darwin's Dangerous Idea: Evolution and the Meanings of Life, →ISBN, page 80:

     Those who yearn for skyhooks call those who eagerly settle for cranes "reductionists", and they can often make reductionism seem philistine and heartless.

   • 2012 June 19, Jonnie Hughes, On the Origin of Tepees: The Evolution of Ideas (and Ourselves), New York: Free Press, →ISBN, page 188:

     It wasn't a miraculous skyhook—no god was needed.

2. An overhead winch.
   • 2009 January, Mike Brown, “The Art of Dismantling Your Restoration Project”, in Walneck's Classic Cycle Trader, page 109:

     To each bolt attach a short length of chain and then run the individual chains to another large one that is run up to the skyhook, which is nothing more than a ratchet cable winch held by an overhead rafter.

   • 2013, Mike Ginns, Jared's Song: Elrek's Rise, Bloomington, IN: AuthorHouse, page 394:

     Jeta stood with her knobbly fists on her hips watching the two of them Goo the cylinders to the skyhooks. Those were the invaluable little workhorses of the construction forces everywhere. A simple but powerful grav unit with a winch and a hook.

3. A helicopter that lifts and transports heavy objects suspended by a heavy cable.
4. (astronautics) A proposed momentum-exchange tether for launching payloads into low Earth orbit by hooking them to the end of a cable that reaches down from an orbiting station into the upper atmosphere.
5. (slang) A CB radio antenna.
   • 1982, Amateur Radio, volume 38, numbers 7-12, page 34:

     […] despite the absence of the proverbial home-grown 75-foot high steel "sky hook."

6. (tennis) A form of the overhead smash in which the eastern grip is used to hit the ball farther behind the body than usually possible.
7. (climbing) A small hook for gripping small and slippery protrusions.

   Synonym: bathook

8. (board sports) A device covering the rider's boot and sometimes screwed to the board, to facilitate jumping and enhance stability.
   • 2003, Caroline Unger, Surfing Long Beach Island, page 101:

     Tom bought the rights to a plastic board that had a skateboard deck and skyhooks.

Translations

imaginary hook suspended in the air

• Finnish: avaruuskoukku
• German: Skyhook m

helicopter that lifts and transports heavy objects

• Finnish: raskas kuljetushelikopteri
• German: Skyhook m