The word of the day for July 14th.
Today's word is yaw, spelled Y-A-W.
Yaw is a verb.
When it's used for the action of a ship, aircraft, spacecraft,
or projectile, it 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.
Here's the word used in a sentence from time.
The out-of-control motion radiated down to the spacecraft itself,
which began yawing and pitching in response to the force.
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 and 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.
With your word of the day, I'm Peter Sokolowski.