slipstream

Etymology

Compound of slip + stream. Fiction sense coined by cyberpunk author Bruce Sterling in 1989.

noun

1. The low-pressure zone immediately following a rapidly moving object, caused by turbulence.
   Monza was the seventh race in a row at which Leclerc had out-qualified Vettel. There were extenuating circumstances this time - Vettel did not have a slipstream on his first lap and the farcical end to qualifying prevented him doing another - but a clear pattern is emerging. 8 September 2019, Andrew Benson, BBC Sport
2. (figurative, by extension) A generated advantage which makes forward movement easier.
   The Republicans, who in fact quintessentially represent what I understand to be private and special interests of a narrow economic kind, have nevertheless managed, flying in the slipstream of Ronald Reagan’s rhetoric, to look like the true guardians of the nation’s public interest. 2012, Benjamin Barber, “Liberal Values in the Age of Interdependence”, in Logos: A Journal of Modern Society and Culture
3. (uncountable, fiction) A genre of fantastic or non-realistic fiction that crosses conventional genre boundaries.
   Coordinate term: New Weird
   Slipstream is not simply a mixture of fantasy and realism, but something which lies between or even beyond the two. 2000, Damien Broderick, quoting Justina Robson and Rozanne Rabinowitz, Transrealist Fiction: Writing in the Slipstream of Science, Greenwood Publishing Group, page 88

verb

1. To take advantage of the suction produced by a slipstream by travelling immediately behind the slipstream generator.
   Although dangerous, over-the-road truck drivers sometimes slipstream with each other to save fuel.
2. (computing, transitive) To incorporate additional software (such as patches) into an existing installer.
   You do this by slipstreaming the updates into the distribution folder. 2003, William Boswell, Inside Windows Server 2003
   A better solution is to create a bootable Windows XP installation CD slipstreamed with the current service pack... 2004, Ed Bott, Carl Siechert, Craig Stinson, Microsoft Windows XP inside out
   It is illegal to distribute slipstreamed CDs. In some locales, it may also be illegal to create them. 2005, Jesper M Johansson, Steve Riley, Protect your Windows network: from perimeter to data