Martin Kasindorf
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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.
Examples of yaw in a Sentence
New Atlas, 8 Oct. 2024
What the pilots noticed during the Boeing 737 MAX 8 flight
On May 25, the day of the flight, the captain who flew the plane noticed a previous yaw damper overcorrection was mentioned in the logbook before taking off.
—Michael Salerno, The Arizona Republic, 10 July 2024
New Atlas, 4 Oct. 2024
Atlantis would be yawed 90 degrees to Columbia, pointing at three o'clock to the older orbiter's 12 o'clock, in order to keep their vertical stabilizers from striking.
—Lee Hutchinson, Ars Technica, 1 Feb. 2023
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Dictionary Entries Near yaw
Cite this Entry
“Yaw.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/yaw. Accessed 1 Dec. 2024.
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yaw
noun
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