English

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Etymology

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From re- +‎ fuel.

Pronunciation

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Verb

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refuel (third-person singular simple present refuels, present participle (US) refueling or refuelling, simple past and past participle (US) refueled or refuelled)

  1. (transitive, intransitive) To refill with fuel.
    • 1989, Richard L. Daft, Organization theory and design:
      [] bundle the sorted, weighed, zipcoded parcels aboard the already refueled aircraft, which speedily take off []
    • 1991, Jeremy Schmidt, Himalayan Passage: Seven Months in the High Country of Tibet, Nepal, China, India, & Pakistan[1], Seattle: The Mountaineers, →ISBN, →OCLC, page 117:
      On a vast, dry lakebed called Tianshuihai, we came to a community of sorts, a desperate huddle of concrete and mud structures. My map labeled the region “Soda Plain,” and it seemed a long time since any water had gathered there. It was also, evidently, earthquake country. Buildings, many of them abandoned, had been shaken off their foundations; their walls had cracked and roofs fallen in. The military post and gas depot where Qu stopped to refuel had been shored up by heavy concrete buttresses. Thousands of fifty-gallon drums littered the ground, along with broken machinery, derelict vehicles, chunks of concrete, goat carcasses, cans, bottles, and shit.
    • 2007 September 18, Natalie Angier, “Songs and Sojourns of the Season”, in The New York Times[2]:
      Guided by the Earth’s magnetic field, starlight and other biocompasses that scientists have yet to fully divine, the birds wheel over land and sea, alighting opportunistically en route to rest, preen and refuel.
    • 2008 February 22, Richard Norton-Taylor and Julian Borger, “Embarrassed Miliband admits two US rendition flights refuelled on British soil”, in The Guardian[3]:
      In his statement, Miliband said the two flights had refuelled at Diego Garcia. Each one had a single detainee on board who did not leave the aircraft.
    • 2015 December 22, Somini Sengupta, “Saudi-Led War in Yemen Frays Ties With the U.S.”, in The New York Times[4]:
      The United States refuels military jets and provides intelligence support to the military coalition, led by Saudi Arabia, that is trying to defeat Houthi insurgents in Yemen.
    • 2019 July 12, Giles Richards, “FIA president Jean Todt calls for return of refuelling during races”, in The Guardian[5]:
      The president of the FIA, Jean Todt, has said he would like to see a return of in-race refuelling to Formula One as a way to improve the sport.
    • 2022 February 26, John Walton, “How the Ukraine conflict could redraw the world air map”, in CNN[6], archived from the original on 26 February 2022:
      During the frostiest days of the Cold War, avoiding the Soviet Bloc meant flying north around Greenland to Alaska, refueling in Anchorage, and then around the Bering Straits to reach Japan.

Usage notes

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  • Refuelled and refuelling are mainly British spellings.

Derived terms

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Translations

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Noun

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refuel (plural refuels)

  1. An act or instance of refilling with fuel.

Derived terms

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Anagrams

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  NODES
COMMUNITY 1
Note 3