The Collaborative International Dictionary
parachuting \par"a*chut*ing\, n. The act or process of descending from a high altitude to the ground by means of a parachute.
Wiktionary
n. The sport of jumping with a parachute. vb. (present participle of parachute English)
WordNet
n. descent with a parachute; "he had done a lot of parachuting in the army" [syn: jump]
Wikipedia
Parachuting, or skydiving, is a method of transiting from a high point to Earth with the aid of gravity, involving the control of speed during the descent with the use of a parachute. It may involve more or less free-fall, a time during which the parachute has not been deployed and the body gradually accelerates to terminal velocity.
Andre-Jacques Garnerin was the first to make successful descents using a canvas canopy from a small basket tethered beneath a hot-air balloon. The first intentional freefall jump with a ripcord-operated deployment is credited to Leslie Irvin in 1919.
The military developed parachuting technology as a way to save aircrews from emergencies aboard balloons and aircraft in flight, and later as a way of delivering soldiers to the battlefield. Early competitions date back to the 1930s, and it became an international sport in 1952.
Usage examples of "parachuting".
Colonel Neville decided that it would be beneath his dignity as Director of Marine Corps Parachuting to be at the gate himself.
He told me, among other things, that their experience parachuting people into France has been that they lost more people training them to use parachutes than they did jumping virtually untrained people on actual operations.
They had prepared a “press background packet,” which included a history of parachuting generally, and of Marine parachuting in some detail.
The best one looked like it would take substantial ground prep and I didn't know about parachuting in at that altitude.
Their husbands weren't going to be parachuting out of airplanes or helocasting— jumping from low-flying helicopters into the ocean below—as they inserted into enemy territory.
God knows there was a point this afternoon where she would have been plenty thrilled to see Jake parachuting down from the sky, coming to save the day.
The Paras were assigned to “penguin mode,” meaning that for three years out of every nine, or one tour out of three, they were off parachuting and used as ordinary lorry-borne infantry.
Yet, because you won\a146t be actually parachuting with your team, you are living up to the letter of the law with regard to Dr.
She knew the risks inherent with such an assignment, and in the scant ten hours or so that they had spent together after parachuting into hostile territory, this courageous woman had given Newman a new understanding of how to face death without flinching.
You could do it if you didn’t have to waste weight on the parachuting of the fifth and fourth sections.