Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- v. Variant of jibe1.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
Wiktionary
- v. To change tack with the wind crossing behind the boat. (Mostly used of boats and other small sailing craft — the corresponding manoeuver in a sailing ship is to wear.)
- v. To shift a fore-and-aft sail suddenly and forcefully from one side to the other, while sailing before the wind. (also jibe.)
- v. To sneer (see gibe.)
- v. gybe at: to hesitate, vacillate, or balk when faced with a proposal, plan, or course of action. (Obsolete)
- n. The act of gybing.
- n. A sudden shift of a sail's angle, or a sudden change in the direction that a boat is sailing.
- n. A sudden change in direction or approach; vacillation.
- n. A sneer. (see gibe.)
GNU Webster's 1913
- See gibe.
- v. To shift from one side of a vessel to the other; -- said of the boom of a fore-and-aft sail when the vessel is steered off the wind until the sail fills on the opposite side.
WordNet 3.0
- v. shift from one side of the ship to the other
Examples
“You'll gybe in a squall when there isn't a motor boat to pick you up, or you'll get a pleurisy when I'm not there, or you'll crash your car where labourers don't come.”
“It's not racist when your best interests gybe with the interests of the candidate that happens to look like you.”
“It's not racist when your best interests gybe with the interests of the candidate that happens to look like you." ... unless you're a white Republican living in the South ...”
“Here Krantzius in the first place beginneth with such a gybe”
“Boats accidentally gybe all the time; people sometimes get hit with the boom.”
The Short Forever
“Some time elapsed, for it was blowing strong, before the main sheet could be hauled in to gybe the sail; during which the cutter was running along the shoal or bar in ten feet water, which was not sufficient to float her; for she struck the ground violently every time that the swell passed by.”
“So they ran before it largely till the bows were pressed right under, and it was no human poser that saved the gybe.”
“And the boom, which had been acting uneasily, finally decided to gybe, and swept majestically over, carrying two of the Four in front of it, and all but dropped them into the water.”
“But the thread is cut between us and we will never gybe again, no, never -- worlds without end.”
“Running up the sail and getting before the wind, so that there was no danger of a gybe, I lashed the rudder so as to direct our course across the lake, and took my seat by Carlotta under the awning.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘gybe’.
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UK Usage - Find US Equivalent
All these terms have a (different) American English equivalent. Wonder if you can identify them?
abridgement (abri..., accoutrement, accoutre, acknowledgement (..., opposite, advert, adaptor, adapter, sticking plaster, advertise, adviser (advisor ..., adze, aesthete and 1196 more...
chained_bear "'...in my considered opinion she is a perfectly odious woman.'
"As though struck down by a judgment the moment he had finished these words, he pitched forward out of his chair on to what little deck was free... An even younger midshipman ... had committed the vessel to a manoeuvre that, the guys being untimely cast off, resulted in a truly monumental gybe."
--P. O'Brian, The Yellow Admiral, 194 Mar 19, 2008