Selcal
noun, verb ·Rare ·Advanced level
Definitions
- 1 A system for alerting a specific aircraft that a radio station on the ground wishes to communicate with them, via transmitting an aircraft-specific sequence of audio tones over the aircraft's company radio frequency to an automatic decoder on board the aircraft. countable, uncountable
- 2 Alternative form of SELCAL. alt-of, alternative, countable, uncountable
- 3 An alert sent via this system. countable
"Duncan awoke to Li Quan's nudging. “What is a sell call?” Duncan's brain needed a moment to come online; sell call didn't make sense. Then he made the connection. A SELCAL was coming through. He jerked the headset off Li Quan's head, donning it in time to hear the words “hundred Chinese aboard your aircraft.”"
- 1 To send a SELCAL alert to (an aircraft). transitive
"Captains earned big bucks because they had to make big decisions. Captain Ray Hanson commanded ACI Flight 103, and he feared that today he would earn those big bucks. San Francisco ARINC had SELCALed them. When the flight engineer answered, he found Sam Devlin on the other end. The owner of Air Cargo International had an incredible message."
- 2 Alternative form of SELCAL. alt-of, alternative
Example
More examples"Duncan awoke to Li Quan's nudging. “What is a sell call?” Duncan's brain needed a moment to come online; sell call didn't make sense. Then he made the connection. A SELCAL was coming through. He jerked the headset off Li Quan's head, donning it in time to hear the words “hundred Chinese aboard your aircraft.”"
Etymology
Blend of selective + calling.
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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.