(sails, sailing, sailed)
Frequency: The word is one of the 3000 most common words in English.
1.
Sails are large pieces of material attached to the mast of a ship. The wind blows against the sails and pushes the ship along.
The white sails billow with the breezes they catch.
N-COUNT
2.
You say a ship sails when it moves over the sea.
The trawler had sailed from the port of Zeebrugge...
VERB: V prep/adv
3.
If you sail a boat or if a boat sails, it moves across water using its sails.
I shall get myself a little boat and sail her around the world...
For nearly two hundred miles she sailed on, her sails hard with ice...
VERB: V n prep, V adv/prep
4.
If a person or thing sails somewhere, they move there smoothly and fairly quickly.
We got into the lift and sailed to the top floor...
VERB: V prep/adv
5.
6.
When a ship sets sail, it leaves a port.
Christopher Columbus set sail for the New World in the Santa Maria.
PHRASE: V inflects, oft PHR prep
7.
to
sail close to the wind: see
wind