mayday
An international distress signal used by shipping and aircraftAn international distress signal used by shipping and aircraft.
» Only the other day in a railway accident, without the time to send out a mayday, many people lost their lives.
Буквально на днях, когда поезд сошёл с рельс, много людей погибло, не успев позвать на помощь. — Hellerick
mcq · Tatoeba · CC BY 2.0 FRMeaning
1 sensesAn international distress signal used by shipping and aircraft.
сигна́л бе́дствияsignál bédstvija, радиосигнал бе́дствияradiosignal bédstvija, сигна́л "терплю бедствие"signál "terplju bedstvije"
an internationally recognized distress signal via radiotelephone
Examples
2 sentencesOnly the other day in a railway accident, without the time to send out a mayday, many people lost their lives.
ruБуквально на днях, когда поезд сошёл с рельс, много людей погибло, не успев позвать на помощь. — Hellerick
The emergency call "Mayday" comes from the French sentence, "Venez m'aider."
deDer Notruf „Mayday“ leitet sich von dem französischen Satz „Venez m'aider“ ab. — Tamy
Translations
2 languagesBy meaning 1
Origin
From the distress signal mayday, from French m'aider, short for Venez m'aider! (“Come to hFrom the distress signal mayday, from French m'aider, short for Venez m'aider! (“Come to help me!”). The term was conceived in the early 1920s by Frederick Stanley Mockford, officer-in-charge of radio at Croydon Airport in England. He had been asked to think of a word that would indicate distress and would easily be understood by all pilots and ground staff in an emergency. Since much of the air traffic at the time was between Croydon and Le Bourget Airport in Paris, he proposed the term "mayday," the phonetic equivalent of the French m'aider.
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