Hi I want to confirm if young British people still say or write “aeroplane”. From what I can tell “airplane” is more popular in both spoken and written forms. What does the Oxford English Dictionary say? I’m rather skeptical of online language websites as the may be derivative and not reflect what most people really say these days. The Guardian newspaper has articles using both written forms. My question is which is: Which form is more popular?
Moved ATMB --> IMHO.
I both say and write aeroplane. Airplane just seems wrong to me. So that’s a sample of one.
My British other half says “aeroplane”, if 36 is young enough to be included in your survey. I’m just an Aussie, but I say “aeroplane” too. “Airplane” sounds strange to us.
Yes, we still say “aeroplane”, and “airplane” would sound like a definite Americansim. Though someone who spoke with an estuary accent (where letters are frequently dropped) might say “airplane” without sounding affected.
Spelling is slightly different as we’re quite used to American spellings for some words. I think of someone wrote “airplane” instead of “aeroplane” I wouldn’t notice and I’m sure I may well’ve made the same spelling mistake myself.
“Aeroplane” is definitely still the standard spelling in the UK. Young people probably spell it “rpln” or type “
” with their fancy “eye-phones”, though. 
If I knew how to do that, I certainly would.
And yes, as far as I know everyone here still says “aeroplane”. Whilst speech here may be slightly influenced by Americanisms, it’s not that much, and spelling doesn’t seem to be affected at all.
Another vote for aeroplane - ‘airplane’ would be perceived as conspicuously Americanised in most conversations, I expect.
In practice though, everybody just says (and writes) ‘plane’. This very occasionally results in hilarious ambiguity.
Thank you all very much.
davidmich
. Heh
I have a feeling aerodrome may have largely died out, though.
Oh, “an aeroplane.” Oh, I say, we are grand, aren’t we? “Oh, oh, no more buttered scones for me, mater. I’m off to play the grand piano. Pardon me while I fly my ‘aeroplane.’”
I use British english, and I say “an aeroplane”.
Huh. I was looking up what that was used for. Apparently, to mean an airplane. Unicode apparently has a dingbats section. I did not know that. I thought everyone was against images showing up in fonts.
EDIT The miscellaneous symbols section seems to contain some, too. And you might even count some of the geometric shapes.
I’ve been in the US for 17 years and “airplane” still sounds wrong.
Unicode even has a big 
I posted that plane symbol from a PC and it’s just a boring plane silhouette flying sideways. Now I’m on Tapatalk and the plane is a metallic-looking aircraft flying upwards at a jaunty angle. friedo posted what looks like a turd with eyes. I’ll have to go back to the PC to check that one out.
(Union flag)
Well, I guess that shows the “emoji” symbols on iOS aren’t equivalent to Unicode, then. The plane one maps to a Unicode plane, but my Union flag didn’t show up at all, and friedo’s Walnut Whip just shows as a square. 
Oh well, have a tight trifoliate snowflake: ❅
Pardon me, sir! If you had access to my facebook feed, you’d have a fine record of the time I have spent in various aerodromes–primarily LaGuardia International Aerodrome, JFK International Aerodrome, Cincinnati International Aerodrome, and very rarely (as of yet), Port Columbus International Aerodrome.
adjusts his monocle and storms off
I love “aeroplane.” It feels all World War I-ish. Snoopy and the Red Baron.