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# sail

«sail» in Mova's school dictionary: **a big piece of cloth on a boat that catches the wind and…** — its meaning for a pupil, its sense in the lessons and examples, with 5 sentences of Mova's corpora that use it.

### part of speech

noun (sail, sails); verb (sail, sails, sailed, sailing)

### meaning for a pupil

1) A sail is a big piece of cloth on a boat that catches the wind and pushes the boat along. [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/S/sail/#m1)

2) To sail is to travel on water in a boat or ship. [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/S/sail/#m2)

3) To sail is to control a sailing boat. [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/S/sail/#m3)

4) To sail can mean to move smoothly and fast: the ball sailed over the fence. [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/S/sail/#m4)

5) To set sail is to start a journey by sea. [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/S/sail/#m5)

### sense in the lessons

In maths: trips with distances and times; boats with sails counted; distance = speed × time. In science: wind is a force that pushes the sail; windmills also have sails. In history: explorers sailed across oceans. In stories: pirates set sail; «plain sailing» means easy.

### examples

- The boat sailed 15 miles in 3 hours. [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/S/sail/#x1)
- Each boat has 2 sails. [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/S/sail/#x2)
- They sail 40 km each day. [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/S/sail/#x3)
- How long will it take to sail 60 miles? [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/S/sail/#x4)
- The wind filled the sails. [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/S/sail/#x5)
- The explorers set sail for a new land. [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/S/sail/#x6)
- The ball sailed over the goalkeeper's head. [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/S/sail/#x7)
- We are learning to sail at summer camp. [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/S/sail/#x8)
- After the hard start, the rest was plain sailing. [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/S/sail/#x9)
- And a ship came sailing by. [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/S/sail/#x10)

### note

Distance, time and speed: distance = speed × time. Trap: none. Homophone: sale (selling things cheaply). Speed at sea is often in knots (nautical miles per hour). Safety: always wear a life jacket on a boat.

### In the corpora

- [Charles Darwin sailed around the world on the Beagle from 1831 to 1836, collecting animals, plants and fossils.](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/264-how-scientists-find-out-naturalists-darwin-the-microscope-and-wildlife-filming/6/)
- [After Columbus crossed the Atlantic, plants and animals sailed both ways, and this swap is called the Columbian exchange.](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/289-food-from-around-the-world-how-crops-travelled-the-globe/2/)
- [Later, cats sailed on ships to catch rats, and that is how they spread around the world.](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/294-cats-through-history-egypt-s-sacred-cats-ship-cats-and-tom-and-jerry/4/)
- [Near the equator lies a zone of weak, changing winds called the doldrums, where sailing ships could be stuck for days.](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/geography/22-winds-monsoons-and-ocean-currents/18/)
- [The Portuguese and Spanish used caravels, small fast ships with triangular lateen sails that could sail closer to the wind.](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/geography/33-castile-portugal-and-the-first-sea-empires/8/)

### Trees and pragmatics

[Every meaning and example of «sail» parsed by Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/S/sail/), each sentence with its dependency tree and frames.