A helicopter is a type of rotorcraft in which lift and thrust are supplied by horizontally-spinning rotors. This allows the helicopter to take off and land vertically, to hover, and to fly forward, backward and laterally. These attributes allow helicopters to be used in congested or isolated areas where fixed-wing aircraft and many forms of VTOL (Vertical TakeOff and Landing) aircraft cannot perform.

The English word helicopter is adapted from the French word hélicoptère, coined by Gustave Ponton d'Amécourt in 1861, which originates from the Greek helix (ἕλιξ) helix, spiral, whirl, convolution[1] and pteron (πτερόν) wing.[2][3][4][5] English language nicknames for “helicopter” include chopper, copter, heli, and whirlybird. In the United States military, the common slang is “helo” pronounced with a long e.

Helicopters were developed and built during the first half-century of flight, with the Focke-Wulf Fw 61 being the first operational helicopter in 1936. Some helicopters reached limited production, but it was not until 1942 that a helicopter designed by Igor Sikorsky reached full-scale production,[6] with 131 aircraft built.[7] Although most earlier designs used more than one main rotors, the configuration of a single main rotor (monocopter) accompanied by a vertical anti-torque tail rotor has become the most common helicopter configuration. Twin-main rotor helicopters (bicopters), in either tandem or transverse rotors configurations, are also in use due to their greater payload capacity than the monorotor design. Coaxial-rotor helicopters, tiltrotor aircraft, and compound helicopters are all flying today. Quadrotor helicopters (quadcopters) were pioneered as early as 1907 in France, and other types of multicopters have been developed for specialized applications such as drones.