The story
Named after Walter Hohmann, the German engineer who described it.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.
Hohmann transfer
Today it means: An elliptical orbit used to transfer a spacecraft between two circular orbits of different altitudes in the same plane, with the periapsis of the orbit being tangent to the smaller circular orbit and its apoapsis being tangent to the larger circular orbit. Full definition →