jettison

jet·ti·son/ˈdʒɛt.ə.s(ə)n/noun, verb

jettison is a noun meaning “Items that have been or are about to be ejected from a boat or balloon to lighten the vessel” (English Wiktionary, September 2026). It is spelled J-E-T-T-I-S-O-N and has 3 syllables (jet·ti·son), and it appears about once in every 3 million words in written English (wordfreq, 2021 data). The plural of jettison is jettisons.

What does jettison mean?

noun

1
Items that have been or are about to be ejected from a boat or balloon to lighten the vessel.
The shoreline was littered with the floating jettison from the wrecked freighter.
2
The act of throwing goods overboard to lighten a ship or aircraft in distress.
The captain ordered the immediate jettison of the heavy cargo to save the sinking ship.

verb

1
To eject from a boat, submarine, aircraft, spaceship or hot-air balloon, so as to lighten the load.
The ballooners had to jettison all of their sand bags to make it over the final hill.
2
To let go or get rid of as being useless or defective.

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).

How do you pronounce jettison?

UK /ˈd͡ʒɛtɪsn̩/
UK /-zn̩/
US /ˈdʒɛt.ə.s(ə)n/

Jettison has 3 syllables, split jet·ti·son in writing.

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Recordings: En-us-jettison.ogg, En-au-jettison.ogg, Wikimedia Commons (author and licence on each file's page).

Forms of jettison

jettisons plural, present, singular, he/she/it
jettisoning participle, present
jettisoned participle, past

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).

How common is jettison?

Jettison appears about once in every 3 million words in written English, the 50,539th most frequent word form in the list.

jettison0.0010.010.11101001,00010,000

rarerper million words of written Englishmore common

Source: written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).

Jettison in Spanish, French, German and Portuguese

Language	Words
French	lest (collectively, items that have been or are about…), délestage, largage (the action of jettisoning items), délester, larguer, jeter par-dessus bord (to eject from a boat)
German	Ballast (collectively, items that have been or are about…), Abwerfen (the action of jettisoning items), über Bord werfen, Ballast abwerfen, abwerfen (to eject from a boat), loswerden (to let go or get rid of)
Portuguese	lastro (collectively, items that have been or are about…), deslastrar (to eject from a boat), jogar fora, livrar-se de (to let go or get rid of)
Spanish	echar del (to eject from a boat)

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Translations are Wiktionary's, by sense; a linked word has its own PlainSpell page.

Where does jettison come from?

From Anglo-Norman getteson, from Old French getaison, from geter, jeter (modern French: would be *jetaison like pendaison); possibly from a Vulgar Latin *iectātiō, from *iectātus < iectāre, from Latin iactō. Doublet of jetsam.

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).