From Longman Dictionary of Contemporary EnglishRelated topics: Weapons, Technology, Daily lifepropellantpro‧pel‧lant /prəˈpelənt/ noun [countable, uncountable]1PMWan explosive for firing a bullet or rocket2TDgas which is used in an aerosol to spray out a liquid —propellant adjectiveExamples from the Corpuspropellant• The mission plan called for an upperlimit on the amount of propellant that could be used during the descent.• In order to achieve a high speed the mass of propellantburnt must be much greater than the mass of the rocket.• In that case, we would think first of burning hydrocarbons with liquid oxygen, or even using the hydrogen-oxygen propellantcombination.• However, there is no source of extra oxygen to expend as rocket propellant.• Next come the four segments that contain the solidpropellantmixture.• The amount of thrustproduceddepends on how much of the propellant is burning at any one time.• Providing life-support materials would take on addedimportance only after we have found out how to operate the propellant business profitably.• This propellant combination performs well and permits a fairly compactvehicledesign.