Was slightly mindblown whenl discovered this.
The two parts to the word "helicopter" are not "helil" and "copter", but "helico" meaning spiral, and "pter" meaning one with wings, like pterodactyl.
1044 AM-5Mar 2018 21,200 Retweets 67,241 Lkes
wait WHAT
Aderinthemadscientist: Wait, so... does -copter come "from" helicopter?
108echoes: Yep! This is called rebracketing. Another famous example would be"-burger": the original food item is named after the German city, (Hamburgl+(er], but semantically reinterpreted as (ham]+[burger].
See also the fictional flying vehicle that works by flapping its wings like a bird, the ornithopter.
Technically they're not just fictional. People build little RC ones, they would just be incredibly complicated compared to even a helicopter to scale up and make controllable/powerful enough to carry people.
One of the cooler flying mechanisms that seem to be a dead end.