yaw

• enPR: yô, IPA^(key): /jɔː/

• Audio (US):

  (file)

• Rhymes: -ɔː
• Homophones: yore (non-rhotic); your, you're (some non-rhotic accents, especially with the pour–poor merger); y'all (l-vocalization)

Unknown, first attested in the mid-16th century. Perhaps related to yar (“quick, agile”), or alternatively from Old Norse jaga (“to chase, drive, move back and forth”), from Middle Low German jagen (“to hunt, chase, pursue”), from Old Saxon *jagōn, from Proto-West Germanic *jagōn, from Proto-Germanic *jakkōną (“to hunt”).

yaw (plural yaws)

1. The rotation of an aircraft, ship, or missile about its vertical axis so as to cause the longitudinal axis of the aircraft, ship, or missile to deviate from the flight line or heading in its horizontal plane.
2. The angle between the longitudinal axis of a projectile at any moment and the tangent to the trajectory in the corresponding point of flight of the projectile.
3. (nautical) A vessel's motion rotating about the vertical axis, so the bow yaws from side to side; a characteristic of unsteadiness.
5. The extent of yawing; the rotation angle about the vertical axis.

   Coordinate terms: pitch, roll

   the yaw of an aircraft

• adverse yaw
• yaw damper

yaw (third-person singular simple present yaws, present participle yawing, simple past and past participle yawed)

1. (intransitive, aviation) To turn about the vertical axis while maintaining course.
2. (intransitive, nautical) To swerve off course to port or starboard.
3. (intransitive, nautical) To steer badly, zigzagging back and forth across the intended course of a boat; to go out of the line of course.
   • 1853–1864, James Russell Lowell, “(please specify the page)”, in Fireside Travels, Boston, Mass.: Ticknor and Fields, published 1864, →OCLC:

     Just as he would lay the ship's course, all yawing being out of the question.

4. (intransitive) To rise in blisters, breaking in white froth, as cane juice in the clarifiers in sugar works.

• heading
• pitch
• roll
• surge
• scend

yaw (plural yaws)

1. A single tumor in the disease called yaws.
   • 1770, William Northcote, The Marine Practice of Physic and Surgery, page 408:

     Sometimes there remains one large Yaw, high and knobbed, red and moist; this is called the master Yaw; […]

• 'way, Way, way, wya

yaw

1. or

• khoyo

Ultimately from Proto-Chadic *ymn. Cognate with Wandala yawe, Podoko yəwa, Moloko yàm, etc.

yaw

1. water

• Topics in Chadic linguistics 3, volume 3 (2007), page 56

yaw

1. Alternative form of yow

From Proto-Khasian *jaw (“market”). Cognate with Khasi ïew (“market”), taïew (“week”).

• IPA^(key): /jaw/

yaw

1. market
2. week