ion engine

1. 1.

   a type of reaction-propulsion engine to propel rockets in space; a stream of positive ions is accelerated to a high velocity by an electric field

   Broaderreaction-propulsion engine

Questions about ion engine

What does ion engine mean?

ion engine means "a type of reaction-propulsion engine to propel rockets in space; a stream of positive ions is accelerated to a high velocity by an electric field".

Is ion engine a common word?

ion engine is banded "Rare" — specialist or archaic — most readers will not have met it. The band comes from how often the word appears in a large corpus of everyday English, not from an editor's impression.