What is "flying saucer"

Saucer \Sau"cer\, n. [F. sauci[`e]re, from sauce. See Sauce.]

1. A small pan or vessel in which sauce was set on a table. [Obs.]
   --Bacon.

2. A small dish, commonly deeper than a plate, in which a cup is set at table.

3. Something resembling a saucer in shape. Specifically:

   1. A flat, shallow caisson for raising sunken ships.

   2. A shallow socket for the pivot of a capstan.

      Flying saucer, a type of Unidentified Flying Object, having a biconvex discoid shape; such objects are occasionally reported to have been sighted, but no example of one has been reliably shown to exist. They are believed by ufologists to originate in outer space, but they are generally presumed to be misinterpretations of ordinary phenomena, illusions or imaginary objects. Fraudulent photographs purporting to show flying saucers are published from time to time.

n. 1 (context informal English) An unidentified flying object; UFO; usually with disc-like properties. 2 In fiction, an alien interplanetary vessel with a disc-like shape and generally metallic appearance.

n. an (apparently) flying object whose nature is unknown; especially those considered to have extraterrestrial origins [syn: unidentified flying object, UFO]

A flying saucer (also referred to as a flying disc) is a descriptive term for a supposed type of flying craft having a disc or saucer-shaped body, commonly used generically to refer to an anomalous flying object. The term was coined in 1930 but has generally been supplanted since 1952 by the United States Air Force term unidentified flying objects or UFO's. Early reported sightings of unknown "flying saucers" usually described them as silver or metallic, sometimes reported as covered with navigation lights or surrounded with a glowing light, hovering or moving rapidly, either alone or in tight formations with other similar craft, and exhibiting high maneuverability.

While disc-shaped flying objects have been interpreted as being sporadically recorded since the Middle Ages, the first recorded use of the term "flying saucer" for an unidentified flying object was to describe a probable meteor that fell over Texas and Oklahoma on June 17, 1930. "Some who saw the weird light described it as a huge comet, a flaming flying saucer, a great red glow, a ball of fire." The highly publicized sighting by Kenneth Arnold on June 24, 1947, resulted in the popularity of the term "flying saucer" by U.S. newspapers. Although Arnold never specifically used the term "flying saucer", he was quoted at the time saying the shape of the objects he saw was like a "saucer", "disc", or "pie-plate", and several years later added he had also said "the objects moved like saucers skipping across the water." Both the terms flying saucer and flying disc were used commonly and interchangeably in the media until the early 1950s.

Arnold's sighting was followed by thousands of similar sightings across the world. Such sightings were once very common, to such an extent that "flying saucer" was a synonym for UFO through the 1960s before it began to fall out of favor. A lot of sightings of the cigar-shaped UFO were reported following it. More recently, the flying saucer has been largely supplanted by other alleged UFO-related vehicles, such as the black triangle. The term UFO was, in fact, invented in 1952, to try to reflect the wider diversity of shapes being seen. However, unknown saucer-like objects are still reported, such as in the widely publicized 2006 sighting over Chicago-O'Hare airport.

Many of the alleged flying saucer photographs of the era are now believed to be hoaxes. The flying saucer is now considered largely an icon of the 1950s and of B-movies in particular, and is a popular subject in comic science fiction.

Beyond the common usage of the phrase, there have also been man-made saucer-like craft. The first flying disc craft was called the Discopter and was patented by Alexander Weygers in 1944. Other designs have followed, such as the American Vought V-173 / XF5U " Flying Flapjack", the British GFS Projects flying saucer, or the British "S.A.U.C.E.R." ("Saucer Aircraft Utilising Coanda Effect Reactions") flying saucer, by inventor Alf Beharie.

A flying saucer is an unidentified flying object (UFO) that is saucer-shaped. The term may also generally refer to any UFO.

Flying saucer(s) may also refer to:

Flying saucers are dimpled discs made from rice paper, filled with sherbet. The first flying saucers were produced in the 1960s. They remain a popular sweet in the United Kingdom, with a 2004 survey naming them as the most popular sweet of all time, while a 2009 survey ranked them as the 12th most popular sweet in the country.

Flying Saucer (also called XHTML renderer) is a pure Java library for rendering XML, XHTML, and CSS 2.1 content.

It is intended for embedding web-based user interfaces into Java applications, but cannot be used as a general purpose web browser since it does not support HTML.

Thanks to its capability to save rendered XHTML to PDF (using iText), it is often used as a server side library to generate PDF documents. It has extended support for print-related things like pagination and page headers and footers.