Martin Kasindorf
Did you know?
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
Maria Mocerino, Interesting Engineering, 24 Jan. 2026
But there are competing theories about the exact origin of syphilis and other treponemal infections, such as bejel and yaws.
—Emma Gometz, Scientific American, 22 Jan. 2026
Jeffrey Kluger, Time, 11 Nov. 2025
The scene in the lobby yawed from hysteric to melancholic and back—hundreds of people surrounded by tote bags and dogs, trading rumors, bleak jokes, and fragments of actual news.
—Dana Goodyear, New Yorker, 22 Sep. 2025
See All Example Sentences for yaw
Cite this Entry
“Yaw.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/yaw. Accessed 1 Feb. 2026.
Copy CitationMedical Definition
yaw
noun
