What is "sail"

Sail \Sail\, n. [OE. seil, AS. segel, segl; akin to D. zeil, OHG. segal, G. & Sw. segel, Icel. segl, Dan. seil. [root] 153.]

1. An extent of canvas or other fabric by means of which the wind is made serviceable as a power for propelling vessels through the water.

   Behoves him now both sail and oar.
   --Milton.

2. Anything resembling a sail, or regarded as a sail.

3. A wing; a van. [Poetic]

   Like an eagle soaring To weather his broad sails.
   --Spenser.

4. The extended surface of the arm of a windmill.

5. A sailing vessel; a vessel of any kind; a craft.

   Note: In this sense, the plural has usually the same form as the singular; as, twenty sail were in sight.

6. A passage by a sailing vessel; a journey or excursion upon the water.

   Note: Sails are of two general kinds, fore-and-aft sails, and square sails. Square sails are always bent to yards, with their foot lying across the line of the vessel. Fore-and-aft sails are set upon stays or gaffs with their foot in line with the keel. A fore-and-aft sail is triangular, or quadrilateral with the after leech longer than the fore leech. Square sails are quadrilateral, but not necessarily square. See Phrases under Fore, a., and Square, a.; also, Bark, Brig, Schooner, Ship, Stay.

   Sail burton (Naut.), a purchase for hoisting sails aloft for bending.

   Sail fluke (Zo["o]l.), the whiff.

   Sail hook, a small hook used in making sails, to hold the seams square.

   Sail loft, a loft or room where sails are cut out and made.

   Sail room (Naut.), a room in a vessel where sails are stowed when not in use.

   Sail yard (Naut.), the yard or spar on which a sail is extended.

   Shoulder-of-mutton sail (Naut.), a triangular sail of peculiar form. It is chiefly used to set on a boat's mast.

   To crowd sail. (Naut.) See under Crowd.

   To loose sails (Naut.), to unfurl or spread sails.

   To make sail (Naut.), to extend an additional quantity of sail.

   To set a sail (Naut.), to extend or spread a sail to the wind.

   To set sail (Naut.), to unfurl or spread the sails; hence, to begin a voyage.

   To shorten sail (Naut.), to reduce the extent of sail, or take in a part.

   To strike sail (Naut.), to lower the sails suddenly, as in saluting, or in sudden gusts of wind; hence, to acknowledge inferiority; to abate pretension.

   Under sail, having the sails spread.

Sail \Sail\, v. i. [imp. & p. p. Sailed; p. pr. & vb. n. Sailing.] [AS. segelian, seglian. See Sail, n.]

1. To be impelled or driven forward by the action of wind upon sails, as a ship on water; to be impelled on a body of water by the action of steam or other power.

2. To move through or on the water; to swim, as a fish or a water fowl.

3. To be conveyed in a vessel on water; to pass by water; as, they sailed from London to Canton.

4. To set sail; to begin a voyage.

5. To move smoothly through the air; to glide through the air without apparent exertion, as a bird.

   As is a winged messenger of heaven, . . . When he bestrides the lazy pacing clouds, And sails upon the bosom of the air.
   --Shak.

Sail \Sail\, v. t.

1. To pass or move upon, as in a ship, by means of sails; hence, to move or journey upon (the water) by means of steam or other force.

   A thousand ships were manned to sail the sea.
   --Dryden.

2. To fly through; to glide or move smoothly through.

   Sublime she sails The a["e]rial space, and mounts the wing[`e]d gales.
   --Pope.

3. To direct or manage the motion of, as a vessel; as, to sail one's own ship.
   --Totten.

Old English segl "sail, veil, curtain," from Proto-Germanic *seglom (cognates: Old Saxon, Swedish segel, Old Norse segl, Old Frisian seil, Dutch zeil, Old High German segal, German Segel), of obscure origin with no known cognates outside Germanic (Irish seol, Welsh hwyl "sail" are Germanic loan-words). In some sources (Klein, OED) referred to PIE root *sek- "to cut," as if meaning "a cut piece of cloth." To take the wind out of (someone's) sails (1888) is to deprive (someone) of the means of progress, especially by sudden and unexpected action, "as by one vessel sailing between the wind and another vessel," ["The Encyclopaedic Dictionary," 1888].

Old English segilan "travel on water in a ship; equip with a sail," from the same Germanic source as sail (n.); cognate with Old Norse sigla, Middle Dutch seghelen, Dutch zeilen, Middle Low German segelen, German segeln. Meaning "to set out on a sea voyage, leave port" is from c.1200. Related: Sailed; sailing.

Etymology 1 n. 1 (context nautical English) A piece of fabric attached to a boat and arranged such that it causes the wind to drive the boat along. The sail may be attached to the boat via a combination of mast, spars and ropes. 2 (context uncountable English) The power harnessed by a sail or sails, or the use this power for travel or transport. 3 A trip in a boat, especially a sailboat. 4 (context dated English) A sailing vessel; a vessel of any kind; a craft. Plural ''sail''. 5 The blade of a windmill. 6 A tower-like structure found on the dorsal (topside) surface of submarines. 7 The floating organ of siphonophores, such as the Portuguese man-of-war. 8 (context fishing English) A sailfish. 9 (context paleontology English) an outward projection of the (l/en: spine), occurring in certain (l/en dinosaur dinosaurs) and (l/en synapsid synapsids) 10 Anything resembling a sail, such as a wing. Etymology 2

vb. 1 To be impelled or driven forward by the action of wind upon sails, as a ship on water; to be impelled on a body of water by steam or other power. 2 To move through or on the water; to swim, as a fish or a waterfowl. 3 To ride in a boat, especially a sailboat. 4 To set sail; to begin a voyage. 5 To move briskly and gracefully through the air.

1. v. traverse or travel by ship on (a body of water); "We sailed the Atlantic"; "He sailed the Pacific all alone"

2. move with sweeping, effortless, gliding motions; "The diva swept into the room"; "Shreds of paper sailed through the air"; "The searchlights swept across the sky" [syn: sweep]

3. travel in a boat propelled by wind; "I love sailing, especially on the open sea"

4. travel by boat on a boat propelled by wind or by other means; "The QE2 will sail to Southampton tomorrow" [syn: voyage, navigate]

1. n. a large piece of fabric (as canvas) by means of which wind is used to propel a sailing vessel [syn: canvas, canvass, sheet]

2. an ocean trip taken for pleasure [syn: cruise]

A sail is any type of surface intended to move a vessel, vehicle or rotor by being placed in a wind.

Sail or SAIL may also refer to:

SAIL, the Stanford Artificial Intelligence Language, was developed by Dan Swinehart and Bob Sproull of the Stanford AI Lab in 1970. It was originally a large ALGOL 60-like language for the PDP-10 and DECSYSTEM-20.

SAIL's main feature is a symbolic data system based upon an associative store (based on the LEAP system of Jerry Feldman and Paul Rovner). Items may be stored as unordered sets or as associations (triples). Other features include processes, events and interrupts, contexts, backtracking and record garbage collection. It also has block-structured macros, a coroutining facility and some new data types intended for building search trees and association lists.

A number of interesting software systems were coded in SAIL, including some early versions of FTP and TeX, a document formatting system called PUB, and the first general purpose, interactive spreadsheet program called BRIGHT.

In 1978, there were half a dozen different operating systems for the PDP-10: ITS (MIT), WAITS (Stanford), TOPS-10 (DEC), CMU TOPS-10 (Carnegie Mellon), TENEX ( BBN), and TOPS-20 (DEC, based on TENEX).

SAIL was ported from WAITS to ITS so that MIT researchers could make use of software developed at Stanford University. Every port usually required the rewriting of I/O code in each application.

A machine-independent version of SAIL called MAINSAIL was developed in the late 1970s and was used to develop many eCAD design tools during the 1980s. MAINSAIL was easily portable to new processors and operating systems, and is still in limited use .

Sail or Saille is the Irish name of the fourth letter of the Ogham alphabet, ᚄ, meaning " willow". The name is related to Welsh helyg(en) and Latin salix. Its Proto-Indo-European root was *sal-. Its phonetic value is [s].

In the medieval kennings, called Bríatharogam or Word Ogham the verses associated with sail are:

lí ambi - "pallor of a lifeless one" (Word Ogham of Morann mic Moín)

lúth bech - "sustenance of bees" (Word Ogham of Mac ind Óc)

tosach mela - "beginning of honey" (Word Ogham of Culainn)

thumb|upright=1.3|Sail of the French nuclear submarine Casabianca; note the diving planes, camouflaged masts, periscope, electronic warfare masts, door and windows. In naval parlance, the sail (American usage) or fin (European/Commonwealth usage) of a submarine is the tower-like structure found on the dorsal (topside) surface of submarines. Submarine sails once housed the conning tower (command and communications data center), the periscope(s), radar and communications masts ( antenna), though most of these functions have now been relocated to the hull proper (and so the sail is no longer considered a "conning tower").

When above the water's surface, the sail serves as an observation platform. It also provides an entrance and exit point on the submarine that has enough freeboard to prevent the submarine being swamped. Underwater the sail acts as a vertical stabilizer. In some submarines, the sail also supports diving planes which are control surfaces used for underwater stability and steering.

Sail is a hill in the English Lake District, lying between Derwentwater and Crummock Water.

Sail is a mystery novel by the bestselling author, James Patterson, and co-author, Howard Roughan, that was released on June 10, 2008.

The Ancient Egyptian Sail hieroglyph is Gardiner sign listed no. P5 for the sail of a ship. The hieroglyph shows a hoisted sail, curved because of wind filling it. It is used in Egyptian hieroglyphs as a determinative for words related to wind, air, breath, sailors, (as "nefu"), floods-(of the Nile), etc. Also an ideogram in 'puff', 'wind', Egyptian (tsh)3w-(ṯau).

The term sail or dorsal sail has been used to refer to sail-like structures on the back of various animals. Such animals can also be referred to as sail-backed or fin-backed. Such structures include the following:

• Neural spine sail - formed by the neural spines of the vertebrae
• Dorsal fin - in some aquatic species with tall fins on their back.
• Crest (anatomy) - a feature which has been referred to as a "sail" when occurring on the back of some animals

"Sail" is a song by American rock band Awolnation. It was released as a single on January 4, 2011. The song was first featured on the band's debut extended play Back from Earth (2010) and was later featured on their debut album Megalithic Symphony (2011). The song was written and produced in Venice, California by group member Aaron Bruno, with Kenny Carkeet performing the audio engineering.

"Sail" is the band's most commercially successful song to date. It debuted at number 89 on the United States Billboard Hot 100 chart in September 2011, spending 20 weeks on the chart before dropping out. The single re-entered the Hot 100 a year later, becoming a massive sleeper hit and reaching a new peak of number 17. It has spent the second longest time inside the Billboard Hot 100 chart, with 79 weeks, only surpassed by Imagine Dragons' " Radioactive".

A sail is means for redirecting the power of the wind to propel a craft on water, ice or land. In doing so, sails mobilize lifting properties as air passes along the surface and they mobilize drag properties to the degree that air is directed at the surface. When both lift and drag are present, they function similarly to a wing in a vertical orientation. In most cases sails are supported by a mast rigidly attached to the sailing craft, however some craft employ a flexible mount for a mast. Sails also employ spars and battens to determine shape in the axis perpendicular to the mast. As a result, sails come in a variety of shapes that include both triangular and quadrilateral configurations, usually with curved edges that promote curvature of the sail.

Kites that are used to propel certain sailing craft are differentiated from sails in that they are supported and controlled by lines that lead from the kite to the craft.