WORD OF THE DAY: YAW
verb | YAW
The verb yaw when used for the action of a ship, aircraft, spacecraft, or projectile means “to move to the left or right especially in an uncontrolled manner.” More broadly, yaw is used as a synonym of alternate to mean “to change from one to another repeatedly.”
// The rogue wave hit the vessel, and the ship yawed hard to the right.
// The album yaws from soulful ballad to up-tempo pop hit and back again.
EXAMPLES OF YAW
“The out-of-control motion radiated down to the spacecraft itself, which began yawing and pitching in response to the force.” — Jeffrey Kluger, Time, 11 Nov. 2025
DID YOU KNOW?
In the heyday of large sailing ships, numerous nautical words appeared on the horizon. Yaw is one such word. Its origin isn’t exactly known, but it began turning up in print in the 16th century, first as a noun meaning “movement off course” or “side to side movement,” and then as a verb. For centuries, it remained a sailing word—often alongside pitch (“to have the front end rise and fall”)—with occasional extended use as a synonym of the verb alternate. When the era of airplane flight dawned, much of the vocabulary of sailing found new life in aeronautics, and “yawing” was no longer confined to the sea. Nowadays yaw, pitch, and roll are just as likely to be used by pilots and rocket scientists to describe the motion of their crafts.
Merriam Webster Dictionary
