navigate

verb

nav·i·gate | \ˈna-və-ˌgāt

navigated; navigating

Definition of navigate

intransitive verb

1 : to travel by water : sail navigated down to the mouth of the river

2 : to steer a course through a medium specifically : to operate an airplane navigate by instrument

3 : get around, move was well enough to navigate under his own power

transitive verb

1a : to sail over, on, or through able to navigate the deep ocean waters

b : to make one's way over or through : traverse … navigate the Internet via hypertext links connecting information-rich computers around the world.— Stephanie Losee

2a : to steer or manage (a boat) in sailing

b : to operate or control the course of navigate an airplane

Synonyms More Example Sentences Learn More about navigate

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Examples of navigate in a Sentence

For thousands of years, sailors navigated by the stars. How about if you drive and I navigate? I'd need a map to navigate the city. Only flat-bottomed boats can safely navigate the canal. He has learned to navigate in rough waters. The downtown area is easily navigated on foot. She has trouble navigating the stairs with her crutches. It took us 10 minutes to navigate through the parking lot to the exit. The captain navigated the ship. He has had experience navigating airplanes through storms.

Recent Examples on the Web

As the rescuers waited anxiously, a diver navigating the 11th teammate through the underwater maze lost hold of the guide rope. — Hannah Beech, Richard C. Paddock And Muktita Suhartono, New York Times, "‘Still Can’t Believe It Worked’: The Story of the Thailand Cave Rescue," 12 July 2018 The new study reveals that the variation in the intensity of treatment stems more from the availability of services and physicians’ discomfort navigating end-of-life choices than from patients’ wishes. — Orly Nadell Farber, STAT, "Physicians’ beliefs may override cancer patients’ wishes for end-of-life care, study finds," 9 July 2018 That’s an interesting story right there: how Laura (Vera Farmiga) navigates a life involving her con man father, Jack (Christopher Plummer); her philandering ex, Leonard (Bobby Cannavale), and her teenage son, Henry (Lewis MacDougall). — Katie Walsh, Detroit Free Press, "Review: Road movie ‘Boundaries’ travels well-worn path," 6 July 2018 First is the robot's ability to navigate while effectively blind. — Eric Limer, Popular Mechanics, "MIT's Cheetah 3 Has a Precision Pounce," 5 July 2018 Videos shared on social media showed cars driving the flooding and people navigating through them knee-high waters. — Jennifer Calfas, Time, "Flash Floods Rain Out Fourth of July Festivities in Houston," 4 July 2018 While turning down acting roles that don’t represent strong female characters is a no-brainer, navigating other parts of being a public figure, and doing so with integrity, can be a bit murkier. — Hannah Pasternak, SELF, "Chloë Grace Moretz Shares Her Daily Beauty Routine," 2 July 2018 Yancy is just one of many parents who still don’t know where their children are, and families like hers will now have to navigate a messy, potentially expensive bureaucratic process to get Darlin back. — Sarah Kinosian, Teen Vogue, "Reunification Proves Complicated for Families Separated at the U.S.-Mexico Border," 14 July 2018 The narrow cave passages that the divers had to navigate, combined with the fact that most of the boys could not swim and were likely malnourished and at risk of panicking, made the operation trickier, Dalcher added. — Billy Kobin, Indianapolis Star, "Hoosier cave diving experts: 'Never heard of anything' like Thailand rescue," 12 July 2018

These example sentences are selected automatically from various online news sources to reflect current usage of the word 'navigate.' Views expressed in the examples do not represent the opinion of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback.