Words and Their Stories: Mayday">Mayday">Mayday">Mayday
28 April 2012
May 1 is also known as May Day and is celebrated in many countries as a spring festival or as an international holiday honoring workers
Now, the VOA Special English program WORDS AND THEIR STORIES.
A listener from Venezuela sent us a question about the meaning of the expression
mayday">mayday">mayday">mayday.
He wrote that he often hears this expression in movies.
Mayday">Mayday
is an emergency code word. It is used around the world in voice communications. You might see a war movie in which an airplane has been hit by rocket fire. The pilot gets on his radio and calls “
mayday">mayday">mayday">mayday, mayday">mayday">mayday">mayday, mayday">mayday">mayday">mayday
” to tell that his plane is in danger of crashing to the ground.
Mayday">Mayday
has nothing to do with the month of May. It comes from the French expressions “venez m’aider,” or “m’aidez,” which mean “help me.”
Frederick Stanley Mockford created the
mayday">mayday
call signal in the nineteen twenties. Mockford was a radio officer at Croydon Airport in London. He was asked to think of a word that could be used in an emergency. The word had to be easily understood by all pilots and airport workers. Much of the air traffic at that time was between Croydon Airport and Le Bourget Airport near Paris, France. So he proposed the word
mayday">mayday
.
Today, many groups use the word to mean a life-threatening emergency. The call is always given three times to prevent mistaking it for some similar sounding words.
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