Now that helico_ptering looks like becoming an increasingly common mode
of short - distance travel, we had better set about devising a suitable term for a helicopter landing-ground before some new barbarism gets ineradicably implanted in our language. This observation is inspired by a- letter in a daily paper from an M.P. who has devised for his own gratification the outrageous term " helidrome." What is wrong with heli- drome? Only everything. To begin with, its inventor appears to think that helicopter " consists of heli copter, instead of helico pter. The Greek roots are " heliko "—rotatory—and " pter "—wings. " Helicopter " is therefore exactly right, if you want to call an aeroplane something Greek. But what about the " drome " part of it? That is almost worse. It all springs from " hippodrome," meaning a race-course, and by some extension a circus, where horses, after all, do sometimes run. For the essential meaning of ",drome " is running. Hence the imbecility of such formations as " picturedrome " and similar terms favoured particularly by the cinematographic profession. " Aero- drome," though a run-way does come into the picture, is not really defensible. " Helicopter " is accurate and straightforward in one language, and " airport " in another. Let us somehow land helicopters rationally.
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