dirigeable

Dirigible comes from the French dirigeable, meaning 'steerable' or 'directable,' from the Latin dirigere (to direct, to steer). The word was coined to solve a specific problem: by the 1850s, hydrogen balloons had been flying for seventy years, but they could not be steered. They went where the wind pushed them. The moment someone attached an engine and a rudder to a balloon, the result needed a new name. It was a ballon dirigeable — a steerable balloon.

Henri Giffard flew the first powered dirigible in 1852, using a small steam engine to propel a hydrogen-filled envelope over Paris at about 6 miles per hour. The word dirigeable appeared in French shortly after. By the 1880s, electric-powered dirigibles were flying, and by 1900, Count Ferdinand von Zeppelin had built the first rigid airship — a dirigible with an internal metal frame. Zeppelin's name became a synonym for the rigid type, but dirigible remained the generic term.

The golden age of dirigibles lasted from about 1910 to 1937. The British R100 and R101, the German Graf Zeppelin and Hindenburg, and the American Akron and Macon were enormous — the Hindenburg was 804 feet long, longer than the Titanic. They crossed oceans. They carried passengers in luxury. The word dirigible appeared in newspapers alongside words like 'transatlantic' and 'luxury liner.'

The Hindenburg disaster on May 6, 1937, in Lakehurst, New Jersey, killed 36 people and effectively ended the dirigible era. The word retreated to history books and steampunk fiction. Modern non-rigid airships — blimps — carry advertising and camera equipment over sporting events, but no one calls them dirigibles. The word that meant 'steerable' now means 'obsolete.'