The term airport may imply a certain stature (having satisfied certain certification criteria or regulatory requirements) that not all aerodromes may have achieved. That means that all airports are aerodromes, but not all aerodromes are airports. Usage of the term "aerodrome" remains more common in the UK, Ireland and Commonwealth nations; in American English, it is only used for a facility specialized in antique or ultralight aircraft.A water aerodrome is an area of open water used regularly by seaplanes or amphibious aircraft for landing and taking off.
According to the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO), an aerodrome is "A defined area on land or water (including any buildings, installations, and equipment) intended to be used either wholly or in part for the arrival, departure, and surface movement of aircraft."
The word aerodrome derives from Ancient Greek ἀήρ (aḗr), air, and δρόμος (drómos), road or course, literally meaning air course. An ancient linguistic parallel is hippodrome (a stadium for horse racing and chariot racing), derived from ἵππος (híppos), horse, and δρόμος (drómos), course. A modern linguistic parallel is velodrome, an arena for velocipedes. Αεροδρόμιο is the word for airport in Modern Greek, which transliterates as aerodromio.
In British military usage, the Royal Flying Corps in the First World War, and the Royal Air Force in the First and Second World Wars, used the term—it had the advantage that their French allies, on whose soil they were often based, and with whom they co-operated, used the cognate term aérodrome.
