slipstream

English

Etymology

Compound of slip +‎ stream. Fiction sense coined by cyberpunk author Bruce Sterling in 1989.

Noun

slipstream (countable and uncountable, plural slipstreams)

1. The low-pressure zone immediately following a rapidly moving object, caused by turbulence.
   • 2019 September 8, Andrew Benson, BBC Sport‎^[1]:

     Monza was the seventh race in a row at which Leclerc had out-qualified Vettel. There were extenuating circumstances this time - Vettel did not have a slipstream on his first lap and the farcical end to qualifying prevented him doing another - but a clear pattern is emerging.

2. (figurative, by extension) A generated advantage which makes forward movement easier.
   • 2012, Benjamin Barber, “Liberal Values in the Age of Interdependence”, in Logos: A Journal of Modern Society and Culture‎^[2]:

     The Republicans, who in fact quintessentially represent what I understand to be private and special interests of a narrow economic kind, have nevertheless managed, flying in the slipstream of Ronald Reagan's rhetoric, to look like the true guardians of the nation's public interest.

3. The relative wind experienced as a result of movement through air.
4. (aviation) The airflow over a propeller-driven aircraft generated by the motion of its propeller(s).

   Synonym: prop wash

5. (uncountable, fiction) A genre of fantastic or non-realistic fiction that crosses conventional genre boundaries.

   Coordinate term: New Weird

   • 2000, Damien Broderick, quoting Justina Robson and Rozanne Rabinowitz, Transrealist Fiction: Writing in the Slipstream of Science, Greenwood Publishing Group, →ISBN, page 88:

     Slipstream is not simply a mixture of fantasy and realism, but something which lies between or even beyond the two.

Derived terms

• slipstreamer

Translations

the low pressure zone

• Finnish: imu (fi), peesi (fi)
• French: zone d’aspiration f
• German: Sog (de) m, Windschatten (de) m
• Spanish: rebufo (es) m, cono de aspiración m, cono de succión m

A genre of fantastic or non-realistic fiction

• Spanish: ciencia ficción no convencional f, ficción estela f

Verb

slipstream (third-person singular simple present slipstreams, present participle slipstreaming, simple past and past participle slipstreamed)

1. To take advantage of the suction produced by a slipstream by travelling immediately behind the slipstream generator.

   Synonym: draft

   Although dangerous, over-the-road truck drivers sometimes slipstream with each other to save fuel.

2. (computing, transitive) To incorporate additional software (such as patches) into an existing installer.
   • 2003, William Boswell, Inside Windows Server 2003:

     You do this by slipstreaming the updates into the distribution folder.

   • 2004, Ed Bott, Carl Siechert, Craig Stinson, Microsoft Windows XP inside out:

     A better solution is to create a bootable Windows XP installation CD slipstreamed with the current service pack...

   • 2005, Jesper M Johansson, Steve Riley, Protect your Windows network: from perimeter to data:

     It is illegal to distribute slipstreamed CDs. In some locales, it may also be illegal to create them.

Translations

to take advantage of the suction

• Finnish: peesata (fi)
• Spanish: ir a rebufo, ir justo detrás de, ir a rueda de

to incorporate additional software

• Finnish: integroida (fi)
• Spanish: estela (es) f, instalación integrada f

Further reading

• slipstream on Wikipedia.Wikipedia
• slipstream genre on Wikipedia.Wikipedia

Anagrams

• palmisters