sail
Pluralsails
Pluralsails
- 1A piece of fabric fixed to a boat and arranged so the wind drives the boat along, usually held up by a mast, spars, and ropes.
A sudden gust tore the sail loose from its rigging.
The crew trimmed the sails to catch the shifting breeze.
Note
The oldest meaning, and the one whose shape and power the word's other uses borrow: Old English seġl, with kin across Germanic in Dutch zeil and German Segel. Shakespeare, in A Midsommer Nights Dreame, watches sails "conceiue / And grow big bellied with the wanton winde", catching the cloth as it fills and swells. The verb comes from a separate Old English verb, seġlan, and is not formed from this noun.
- 2
- 3To be driven forward across water by wind acting on the sails, or by steam or another power source.
Tall ships sail best with a steady wind behind them.
The modern ferry sails on diesel power rather than wind.
Note
The verb outlived the canvas. A steamer or ferry sails as readily as a clipper, whatever drives it. The verb can also take the water itself as a direct object. Tennyson, in In Memoriam (1850), addresses a "Fair ship, that from the Italian shore, / Sailest the placid ocean-plains", and sail the seas and sail the Atlantic follow the same pattern.
- 4
- 5To set out on a voyage by boat; to begin a journey across water.
The explorers sail at first light, weather permitting.
Her ship sailed from Lisbon in early spring.
Note
Departure is the point here, and the verb stands without an object. The destination follows for: we sail for Australia tomorrow. The simple present carries a scheduled future, as it does with leave or depart. The port left behind takes from: sailed from Lisbon.
- 6To travel through the air quickly and with grace, as a thrown disc or an arrow does.
Watch the arrows sail toward the distant target.
The frisbee sailed gracefully across the park.
Similarglide, fly, soar, float
Note
Flight borrowed from the sea spans the whole register. Shakespeare's winged messenger in Romeo and Juliet "sails upon the bosom of the air", and Saj Chowdhury's BBC Sport report of 2011 has a deflected clearance that "sailed in". A preposition or adverb usually marks where the thing goes: sailed in, sailed over, sailed across the park.
- 7To move briskly yet calmly, with a smooth and dignified manner.
The duchess sailed across the ballroom, greeting no one.
He can sail through any crowd without seeming to rush.
Similarsweep, glide, breeze, float
Note
A person can move like a ship under full canvas: steady, upright, unhurried. The verb nearly always wants a direction, as in sailed out, sailed into the room or sailed past. It often carries a shade of hauteur, as when the duchess sailed haughtily out of the room. Unlike flight through the air, the grace here is in the bearing, not the speed.
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- 9One of the broad blades or vanes of a windmill, which the wind pushes to turn the mill.
A torn sail hung limp against the side of the windmill.
The miller repaired the canvas on each of the windmill's sails.
Note
Windmills came by the word honestly. Their arms are framed and covered with fabric or slats, and they catch the wind as a ship's canvas does, turning it into motion rather than travel. The usual plural phrase is sails of a windmill. Dickens, in Great Expectations, counts "sails of windmills carried away" among a storm's damage, alongside stripped roofs and uprooted trees.
- 10Something that resembles a sail in shape or function, such as a wing or a fin.
The flying squirrel spread a furry sail of skin and glided to the next tree.
Engineers shaped the drone's broad sail to mimic a gull's wing.
Note
Poets give birds sails. Spenser, in The Faerie Queene (1596), has an eagle soaring "To weather his broad sails", naming the wings after the canvas they resemble. The figure works on shape and function together: a broad surface spread to catch the air.
- 11The driving power captured by sails, or the use of that power to travel or carry goods over water.
The clipper made the entire voyage under sail, never once starting her engine.
Before steam, all long-distance trade moved by sail across the oceans.
Similarcanvas
Note
Power and means of travel, rather than cloth, are the point here. The sense lives in fixed phrases. Under sail describes a vessel moving on the wind at that moment. By sail names the means of transport, as by rail or by air does. It shares the bare, article-free form of sail as a mass of canvas, but how much sail asks about canvas, whereas under sail asks what is driving the ship.
- 12A large, fast-swimming marine fish (the sailfish) recognized by its tall, sail-like dorsal fin.
The charter captain promised we would hook a sail off the reef by noon.
A sail can grow longer than an adult and swim in fast bursts to catch prey.
Similarsailfish
Note
Anglers clip sailfish to sail, and the short form behaves as an ordinary count noun: we caught three sails today. The plural is the thing to watch. The old word for a ship stays sail after a number, but the fish takes the regular -s.
- 13A tower-like structure rising from the dorsal, or topside, surface of a submarine.
Officers stood atop the sail as the submarine cruised on the surface.
The boat's sail housed the periscopes and several antennas.
Similarfin
Note
The canvas word carried over to steel. The same Old English segl that names the fabric on a mast here labels the tower standing up from a submarine's back, named for its upright, sail-like silhouette. It overlaps almost entirely with the conning-tower meaning. Sail describes the structure by its shape, while conning tower describes it by its role as the place the boat is conned, or steered, from.
- 14The conning tower of a submarine, the raised structure from which it is steered and watched.
The lookout scanned the horizon from the open hatch atop the sail.
The submarine's sail was barely visible above the choppy water.
Similarfin
Note
The name is a borrowing by resemblance. The tall, narrow fin rising above a submarine's hull stands where a ship's canvas would. On modern boats the structure encloses the bridge and carries the periscopes, masts and sensors, and sail is the preferred name; conning tower is the older term. The same structure appears in the tower on a submarine's topside.
- 15An outward projection of the spine forming a tall ridge along the back, found in certain dinosaurs and synapsids.
Spinosaurus carried a tall sail supported by greatly elongated backbone spines.
Researchers debate whether the sail of Dimetrodon controlled body heat or served as display.
Note
Paleontologists use the word for a crest built from greatly lengthened neural spines on the vertebrae, once covered by soft tissue. It arose separately in very different animals: in synapsids such as Dimetrodon, which is not a dinosaur, and in theropods such as Spinosaurus. A sail-backed fossil therefore says nothing on its own about kinship.
- 16The gas-filled floating organ of siphonophores such as the Portuguese man-of-war, which buoys the colony at the sea surface.
The translucent sail of a Portuguese man-of-war kept the colony riding the surface currents.
Caught by a strong breeze, the sail carried the whole animal into the shallows.
Similarfloat, pneumatophore
Note
Marine zoology uses the word for the pneumatophore, the gas-filled float of a siphonophore. In the Portuguese man-of-war it does a sail's real work: it rides above the water and catches the wind, so the colony drifts wherever the breeze pushes it. Few borrowed senses of the word are this literal.
- 17A vessel of any kind, especially a sailing ship; a craft, often counted as one of a fleet.
The admiral commanded a fleet of forty sail off the coast.
Lookouts sighted a strange sail bearing down on the convoy.
Note
The counting word of fleets and harbors keeps its singular form after a number and takes a plural verb: twenty sail were in sight. Charles E. Lee, writing in 1945, could still describe a quay able to hold "more than 100 sail of traders". The usage now reads as dated. Outside a deliberately old-fashioned style, ships or vessels is the safer choice.
- 18Canvas considered collectively as a single material rather than as separate sails; the spread of sailcloth a vessel carries.
With a storm building, the captain ordered the crew to shorten sail.
The clipper crowded on every yard of sail to reach port before nightfall.
Similarcanvas
Note
Sailors treat canvas here as a quantity, the way one speaks of water or rope. It takes no article and no plural. The verbs that go with it measure amount: take in sail, shorten sail, make sail, crowd on sail. The article separates it from a single piece of fabric: take in the sail means one, while take in sail means as much canvas as the moment requires.
- 19To deal cards by sending them gliding across a surface from a distance.
The dealer sailed the top card down the length of the felt to the last seat.
Skilled croupiers can sail a card the full width of the table without flipping it.
Similarslide, skim, flick, pitch
Note
This is a card table's verb. The card is the direct object, and a preposition gives its target. Johnny Hughes, in Texas Poker Wisdom (2007), recalls a hat set across the room and players who would "sail cards into it". The image is the card skimming flat across the felt or the air, like a ship under way.
Showing meanings only.
Practice
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Origins
From Middle English saile, from Old English seġl, from Proto-West Germanic *segl and Proto-Germanic *seglą. It is related to Dutch zeil, German Segel, Danish sejl, and Swedish segel.
From Middle English sailen, from Old English seġlan or siġlan ("to sail"), from Proto-West Germanic *siglijan. It is related to Dutch zeilen, German segeln, Danish sejle, and Icelandic sigla.