What does “despegue” mean in Spanish?
Despegue del Falcon 9 hacia el Sol
B1 Spanish listening practice · Spanish from Spain · Picked for people who know some
A rocket launch in Spanish is a despegue, and the verb is despegar — literally “to un-stick,” from pegar, “to glue, to stick.” A plane or rocket taking off is peeling itself off the ground. Mission control counts down to ¡despegue! exactly where English says “liftoff,” and the return trip has its own earthy logic: aterrizar, “to land,” is built on tierra.
The clip is a live countdown: “3, 2, 1... Motores encendidos y despegue. Tenemos despegue” — a Falcon 9 carrying three space-weather probes. The pegar family keeps the glue metaphor going: pegajoso (sticky), pegamento (glue), despegar una etiqueta (peel off a label). Figuratively, an economy taking off enjoys un despegue económico.
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Source: wordfreq 3.1.1 (general) · SUBTLEX-ESP 2011 (spoken). These numbers are close, not perfect.