喜樂美語
  1. 1超音速的。台灣說「超音速」，注意不要跟「超聲波 ultrasonic」搞混——那是聲音的頻率高，不是速度快。

    Supersonic means faster than the speed of sound — about 1,235 km/h at sea level. A supersonic jet, supersonic flight, supersonic speed. When an aircraft crosses that line it makes the loud bang people call a sonic boom, which is why supersonic passenger flights over land are mostly banned.

    It is a real technical term from aviation and physics, but it is easy enough that ordinary people use it happily. It also gets used loosely for "extremely fast" — "he ran off at supersonic speed" — which everyone understands as .

    There is a scale worth knowing: (slower than sound), supersonic (faster than sound), hypersonic (very much faster, roughly five times the speed of sound and up). The word can be a noun too, meaning a supersonic aircraft, but that use is rare and mostly for specialists.

From the word’s history

super- 'beyond' + sonic.

super-（超過）加 sonic（聲音的），即「超過音速的」。

Wiktionary

組成super- "above, beyond" (Latin super) + sonic "of sound" (Latin sonus, sound). So: beyond sound — beyond the speed at which sound travels.

同家族的字

  • sonicsame Latin sonus 'sound'
  • hypersonicsame sonic, with Greek hyper- instead of Latin super-
  • resonatesame sonus — to sound again
  • soundthe everyday English word from the same Latin sonus, through French

原始詞典資料3 筆記錄

以下是外部詞典記錄的用法，摘錄並精簡格式，我們還沒有寫成教學內容。上面的說明才是我們自己寫的；有些用法可能上面已經講過了。

supersonicadj

  • 1

    Greater than the speed of sound (in the same medium, and at the same temperature and pressure).

    • supersonic jet
    • supersonic movement
  • 2

    Ultrasonic, having a frequency too high to be audible.

supersonicnoun

  • 1

    An aircraft that can travel at the speed of sound.

摘錄自 英文維基詞典 English Wiktionary，已精簡格式；依 CC BY-SA 4.0 授權使用，改動後的內容同樣以此授權提供。