alunir

By analogy with atterrir and amerrir, from a- +‎ lune +‎ -ir, attested from 1921.[1]

• IPA^(key): /a.ly.niʁ/

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• Rhymes: -iʁ

alunir

1. (intransitive) to land on the Moon
   • 1921, Charles Nordmann, chapter 5, in Einstein et l'univers‎, Paris: Hachette, page 127:

     Considérons donc le projectile lorsqu’il commence à tomber librement vers la Lune. Il est évident qu’à partir de cet instant et jusqu’à ce qu’il ait atterri ou plutôt aluni…, il se comportera exactement comme notre ascenseur—je devrais dire notre descenseur—de tout à l’heure.

     Let us thus consider the projectile once it begins to fall freely towards the Moon. It is evident from that moment until the moment it lands on the Earth or rather lands on the Moon…, it behaves exactly like our elevator—I should say our descender—from earlier.

This is a regular verb of the second conjugation, like finir, choisir, and most other verbs with infinitives ending in -ir. One salient feature of this conjugation is the repeated appearance of the infix -iss-.

• alunissage

• “alunir”, in Trésor de la langue française informatisé [Digitized Treasury of the French Language], 2012.