recoilless
adjective
recoilless is an adjective meaning “Lacking recoil. Generally referring to a weapon so designed as to fire a projectile without causing a powerful, destructive backward "kick" or recoil…” (English Wiktionary, September 2026). It is spelled R-E-C-O-I-L-L-E-S-S, and it appears about once in every 15 million words in written English (wordfreq, 2021 data).
What does recoilless mean?
adjective
- 1
Lacking recoil. Generally referring to a weapon so designed as to fire a projectile without causing a powerful, destructive backward "kick" or recoil in reaction. The objective of the design is to permit a very light cannon to deliver a relatively large projectile.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
How do you pronounce recoilless?
- US
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Recordings: En-us-recoilless.oga, Wikimedia Commons (author and licence on each file's page).
Forms of recoilless
- more recoilless comparative
- most recoilless superlative
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
How common is recoilless?
Recoilless appears about once in every 15 million words in written English, the 115,751st most frequent word form in the list.
Source: written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).
Recoilless in Spanish, French, German and Portuguese
In the sense Translations:
| Language | Words |
|---|---|
| German | rückstoßfrei, rückstoßlos |
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 recoilless come from?
From recoil + -less.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).