trial balloon

Calque of French ballon d’essai (“small balloon released into the sky to determine the direction and tendency of winds in the upper air before a manned ascent in a larger balloon; (figuratively) prospective action to test acceptance”): ballon (“balloon”), essai (“trial, try; assay”).^[1]

• (Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /ˌtɹaɪəl bəˈluːn/
• (General American) IPA^(key): /ˌtɹaɪəl bəˈlun/

• Audio (General Australian):

  (file)

• Rhymes: -uːn
• Hyphenation: trial bal‧loon

trial balloon (plural trial balloons)

1. (aeronautics, historical) A small balloon released into the sky to determine the direction and tendency of winds in the upper air before a manned ascent in a larger balloon; a ballon d'essai.
   • 1870, F Marion, “The Necrology of Aeronautics”, in Wonderful Balloon Ascents: Or, The Conquest of the Skies. A History of Balloons and Balloon Voyages. From the French (Illustrated Library of Wonders), New York, N.Y.: Charles Scribner & Co., →OCLC, page 183:

     For many weeks in succession the little trial balloons thrown up to show the course of the wind were driven back upon the shores of France.

   • 1872 August, “Travels in the Air. Concluding Paper.”, in Lippincott’s Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, volume X, Philadelphia, Pa.: J B Lippincott and Co., →OCLC, page 147, column 2:

     A small trial balloon was then sent up and its course followed by a thousand eyes. In one bound it flew against the bell-tower of the town-house, then rose again and made directly for the Northern Ocean.

   • , T. C. Hepworth, “Voyages in Cloudland”, in Robert Brown, editor, Science for All, London, Paris, New York, N.Y.: Cassell, Petter, Galpin & Co., →OCLC, page 55:

     In the same year the brothers Montgolfier were carrying on their experiments at Annonay. Their first serviceable balloon—the outcome of various attempts—was made of linen and lined with paper. [...] The excitement caused by the new-fangled machine soon spread to Paris, where many scientific men turned their attention to the subject. Among them was M. Charles, who was led to experiment with hydrogen. He manufactured a small trial balloon of silk, which he covered with an elastic varnish, and he had the satisfaction of seeing it rise up in the air, until it disappeared in the clouds.

   • 1889, Lyof N Tolstoï [i.e., Leo Tolstoy], chapter XVIII, in Nathan Haskell Dole, transl., War and Peace  In Four Volumes, volume III, New York, N.Y.: Thomas Y Crowell & Co. , →OCLC, part second, page 195:

     That day, in order to get a little recreation, Pierre drove out to the village of Vorontsovo to see a great air-balloon, which Leppich had built for the destruction of the enemy, and a trial balloon, which was to be let off on the next day.

   • 1892, Robert Lowry Sibbet, “Paris, December 26th, 1870”, in The Siege of Paris by an American Eye-witness In Three Parts, Harrisburg, Pa.: Meyers Printing and Publishing House, →OCLC, 2nd part (During the Siege), page 319:

     Whenever a balloon ascension is to take place M. Rampont, at the Hôtel des Postes, hastens to send off a few trial balloons for the purpose of ascertaining the course of the wind. When the direction is unfavorable the departure is postponed; on the contrary when it is favorable, orders are sent immediately to the station at which the ascension is to take place.

2. (idiomatic, figuratively) An idea, suggestion, or prospective action, product, etc., offered to an audience or group in order to test whether it generates acceptance or interest.

   Synonyms: ballon d'essai, feeler

   • 1826 July, “Art. VI.—Remarks on M. le Colonel Bory de St-Vincent’s Proposed Species of the Genus Homo.”, in David Brewster, editor, The Edinburgh Journal of Science, volume V, number I, Edinburgh: William Blackwood; London: T Cadell, →OCLC, pages 36–37:

     "The originality of the plan and views of the author [Jean Baptiste Bory de Saint-Vincent], and, above all, the perfect independence of its execution," are, according to the narrator in the Bulletin, the chief features of this new production; and the summary sketch of it which has been published, is (to use the phraseology of the same writer) "as a kind of trial balloon," launched with the view of seeing how the wind sits for his "great work."

   • 1832 October, “The Canada Corn Trade”, in Fraser’s Magazine for Town and Country, volume VI, number XXXIII, London: James Fraser , →OCLC, page 365, column 2:

     If any stronger presumption that his brochure is a trial-balloon of the present ministry be required, it will be found in the pages 19 and 20, wherein Sir Howard Douglas and Mr. Bliss receive a full volley of foul-mouthed Billingsgate.

   • 1855 December, “Bellot. His Adventures and Death in the Arctic Regions.”, in Harper's New Monthly Magazine, volume XII, number LXVII, New York, N.Y.: Harper & Brothers, publishers, , →OCLC, page 100, column 2:

     Hints—trial-balloons he [Joseph René Bellot] called them—are adroitly thrown out in the newspapers, and one or two articles from his pen appear in the periodicals. When the public mind, as he judges, is prepared, he addresses the Minister officially on the subject.

   • 1867 October, “Review VI. 1. Die Inhalations-Therapie in Krankheiten der Respirations-Organe, mit besonderer Berücksichtigung der durch Laryngscop ermittelten Krankheiten des Kehlkopfs. Von Dr. Georg Lewin. Mit 25 Holzschnitten Zweite Auflage. Berlin. 1865. Pp. 506; mit Anhang, pp. 37. ”, in The British and Foreign Medico-chirurgical Review: Or Quarterly Review of Practical Medicine and Surgery, volume XL, London: John Churchill and Sons, , →OCLC, page 386:

     The other two productions of the press quoted at the commencement are of the fugitive pamphlet sort, to be considered as a sort of literary trial-balloons, thrown out to see if the current of opinion sets fairly for their makers to follow on with larger, or, as sometimes happens, to attract the public gaze to the makers of the new literary bubbles.

   • 1908 December 12, “A New Deal in the Pacific”, in Alfred Holman, editor, The Argonaut, volume LXIII, number 1654, San Francisco, Calif.: Argonaut Publishing Company, →OCLC, page 369, column 2:

     Possibly the story is given out tentatively by way of testing the public mind—as a species of "trial balloon," if we may borrow a French term for this sort of experimentation with public sentiment.

   • 1925 November 30, “Tariff: Campaign Issue”, in Time‎, New York, N.Y.: Time Warner Publishing, →ISSN, →OCLC, archived from the original on 19 February 2012:

     Congressman Cordell Hull, onetime Chairman of the Democratic National Committee, last week issued a statement, as a sort of trial balloon no doubt, linking the high tariff with failure to get 100 cents on a dollar in payment on War debts from Europe.

   • 1938 November 28, Frederick H. Wood, Louis J. Colombo, Alfred McCormack, and Thomas T. Cooke, attorneys for petitioner, “Point II: The Order in Petitioner’s Case (No. 183) Remanding the Case to the Board was Erroneous and should be Reversed”, in Ford Motor Company, Petitioner, against National Labor Relations Board. Brief on Behalf of Petitioner in Reply to Brief for National Labor Relations Board in Opposition to Petition for Writs of Certiorari to the United States Circuit Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, : Supreme Court of the United States, pages 45–46:

     If the Board had the right which it claims to divest the Court of its jurisdiction, then the Board's orders would become nothing more than trial balloons. If they met with no opposition they would be enforced. If the respondent had the means and the inclination to oppose the Board, and set up meritorious defenses, the cases could be taken back for more careful consideration.

   • 1971, Philip Roth, “The Assassination of Tricky”, in Our Gang: (Starring Tricky and His Friends), New York, N.Y.: Random House, →ISBN; trade paperback edition, New York, N.Y.: Vintage International, May 2001, →ISBN, page 133:

     Mr. Chairman, is there any truth at all to the growing suspicion that you people are sending up a trial balloon with these rumors of the President's death? To see just how much political mileage there is in it, if any?

   • 1979, Robert Darnton, The Business of Enlightenment: A Publishing History of the Encyclopédie 1775–1800, Cambridge, Mass., London: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, →ISBN, page 139:

     Publishers frequently used subscription announcements as trial balloons. If they failed to elicit much response, they would drop the project, having lost only a pittance for the publication of the prospectus or having gained a ransom from some competitor who took them seriously.

   • 2019 November 21, Samanth Subramanian, “How our home delivery habit reshaped the world”, in Katharine Viner, editor, The Guardian‎, London: Guardian News & Media, →ISSN, →OCLC, archived from the original on 6 April 2020:

     No one in the day-to-day hustle of e-commerce talks very seriously about the kind of trial-balloon gimmicks that claim to revolutionise the last mile: deliveries by drones and parachutes and autonomous vehicles, zeppelin warehouses, robots on sidewalks.

• trial-balloon

• balloon goes up
• put out feelers
• run something up the flagpole
• test the waters

• trial balloon on Wikipedia.Wikipedia
• “trial balloon”, in OneLook Dictionary Search.