If a ship sinks, what does an airship do?

Question

We were having a discussion at work about airships (zeppelins, blimps, etc.) and someone spoke about them sinking when they crash. Someone else said they can't sink because they're not descending through water.

So we googled the definition of the word sink, and got this:

1. go down below the surface of something, especially of a liquid; become submerged.
2. descend from a higher to a lower position; drop downwards.

The second definition means that an airship sinks. Then the same person that said it wasn't descending through water asked if that means skydivers are sinking.

Is there a better word than sink to describe what an airship does when it falls from the sky?

Answer 1

'Descend,' 'dive,' 'drop,' and 'fall' are all perfectly fine and, in the case of an uncontrolled descent, 'crash' does indeed tend to be the end result (though this refers specifically to what happens when it stops falling due to an undesirable form of contact with terrain.)

However, 'sink' is still perfectly valid to describe the actual falling. Indeed, pilots use the term 'sink' (usually when descending faster than normal) and use the term 'sink rate' to refer to the rate of descent of an aircraft.

From Wikipedia:

The rate of decrease in altitude is referred to as the rate of descent or sink rate.

Similarly, Ground Proximity Warning Systems on newer aircraft use the term 'sink' when they produce automated callouts. When an excessive rate of descent is detected by the radio altimeter, the following callout may be generated:

Sink Rate! Pull up!

When altitude is lost after takeoff or with a high power setting, the following callout may be produced:

Don't Sink!

Source: Wikipedia. Also, I'm a pilot (of small airplanes) and hear the terms frequently used by other pilots.

Answer 2

Very simple, it crashes.

This word has been used throughout the history of airships. Most famously the Hindenburg.

An airship is just another form of aircraft. It is not a ship of the seas. The vocabulary of flight is applied.

Answer 3

It plummets.

Plummets - A steep and rapid fall

Answer 4

It falls

It's not part of the plan for a ship to sink and it's often due to unfavorable circumstances. An aerial craft in free-fall is the closest equivalent I can think of. On an airship this would like be cause by a puncture or any other escape of the gaseous body.

Corrected Answer - "Founder"

• That's not a typo, it's "f o u n d e r"
• Oxford dictionary reference for founder

Answer 5

The reason that "sink" does not sound right when applied to an airship is because "2. descend from a higher to a lower position; drop downwards" can describe a normal part of airship operation. Therefore, it does not convey the same implication of unintended, uncontrolled, ominously doomed descent, as when applied to surface ships.

Plummet and fall, work in that sense, yet an airship might potentially recover unscathed from that condition with quick action(ie. engines restarted). For a surface ship, a sinking event is interpreted as its end, recoverable only as salvage. So in that sense crash is the correct word.

One word that does apply equally is founder.

Answer 6

Any aircraft losing altitude is typically said to be 'descending.'

de·scend dəˈsend/ verb

1. move or fall downward.

"the aircraft began to descend"

synonyms: go down, come down; drop, fall, sink, dive, plummet, plunge, nosedive

When it hits the ground in an uncontrolled way it has crashed.

Answer 7

I think maybe it drops.

drop:

to fall vertically; have an abrupt descent.

to sink or fall to the ground, floor, or bottom as if inanimate.

Source: Dictionary.com, definitions 33 & 34.

Answer 8

In the context of war, or it being crashed through forceful means, consider using the verb "down".

down

verb informal past tense: downed; past participle: downed

1. knock or bring to the ground. "175 enemy aircraft had been downed" synonyms: knock down/over, knock to the ground, bring down, topple; More

Answer 9

I think you can use dive:

• To fall head down through the air. (AHD)

A dive

• may technically be described as "a steep descending flight path". While there is no specific definition for what degree of steepness transforms a downward trajectory into a dive, it is necessarily a rapid, nose-forward descent.

• Dives are used intentionally in aerobatic flying to build speed for the performance of stunts, and by dive bombers to approach a target quickly while minimizing exposure to enemy fire before the dive. A dive may also be used as an emergency maneuver, for example to extinguish an engine fire.

Wikipedia

Answer 10

"If a ship sinks, what does an airship do?"
It depends on whether the airship is roped to the ship or not! ;)
As others have pointed out, a ship moves in a two-dimensional space, the surface of the sea. If it sinks, that is the end of the ship! But an airship moves in 3-dimensional space: if it sinks, it merely loses altitude. Until, that is, it crashes (if forcible) or lands (if deliberate). I have observed that the word 'descends' most often denotes deliberate, intentional action, whereas 'sinks' may denote unintentional descending, e.g. as result of loss of air, but context would modify that observation.

Answer 11

I think one can legitimately talk of "sinking" in any fluid medium, not just water -- especially for descent because it's no longer less dense than the medium it's in.

Consider the behaviour of the little boat in this video -- it's a boat made of foil floating on sulphur hexaflouride gas. When the person uses the beaker to scoop up gas and fill the floating boat until it falls to the bottom of the tank, I think that sink is exactly the right word for what the boat does.

Similarly people often speak of helium-filled toy balloons that eventually lose enough helium to no longer stay up as "sinking" to the floor.

If a boat can sink in gas, and a toy balloon can sink in air, what is so different about an airship that comes down?

If it came down rapidly, that could be called a crash but if it descends so slowly that no damage is incurred ... "crash" would seem out of place, but sink would still be a reasonable description (among others).