Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- v. To turn aside from a course, direction, or purpose; swerve: "a sequence of adventures that veered between tragedy and bleak farce” ( Anthony Haden-Guest). See Synonyms at swerve.
- v. To shift clockwise in direction, as from north to northeast. Used of the wind.
- v. Nautical To change the course of a ship by turning the stern to the wind while advancing to windward; wear ship.
- v. To alter the direction of; turn: veered the car sharply to the left.
- v. Nautical To change the course of (a ship) by turning the stern windward.
- n. A change in direction; a swerve.
- v. Nautical To let out or release (a line or an anchor train).
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- To turn; specifically, to alter the course of a ship, by turning her head round away from the wind; wear.
- To shift or change direction: as, the wind veers to the north; specifically, in meteorology, with respect to the wind, to shift in the same direction as the course of the sun—as, in the northern hemisphere, from east by way of south to west.
- To turn round; vary; be otherwise minded: said of persons, feelings, intentions, etc. See also veering.
- To turn; shift.
- Nautical, to change the course of by turning the stern to windward; lay on a different tack by turning the vessel's head away from the wind; wear: as, to veer ship.
Wiktionary
- n. A turn or swerve; an instance of veering.
- v. intransitive To change direction or course suddenly; to swerve
- v. intransitive, nautical to change direction into the wind; to wear ship
- v. transitive to turn
GNU Webster's 1913
- v. To change direction; to turn; to shift.
- v. To direct to a different course; to turn; to wear.
WordNet 3.0
- v. shift to a clockwise direction
- v. turn sharply; change direction abruptly
Etymologies
- From the French virer. (Wiktionary)
- French virer, from Old French.Middle English veren, from Middle Dutch vieren; see per1 in Indo-European roots. (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)
Examples
“Sobel, rightly in my view, brings us back to the scientific truth of Galileo's observations; and whatever the reasoning and motives for Pope Urban VIII's pursuit of him, the fact remains that the ecclesiastical authorities were given all the right information and came up with the wrong answer, and while Sobel doesn't rub it in, she doesn't veer from the central point either.”
August Books 29) Galileo's Daughter: A Drama of Science, Faith and Love, by Dava Sobel
“The images, which occupy dozens of amorphous panels, veer from the sweetly sentimental — the cartoon bunnies and kittens that fill his wife Whitney Ward's bedtime thoughts — to nightmarish visions grotesque enough to evoke both 1950s EC Comics and 15th-century Hieronymous Bosch.”
“But our courts seem to have not gotten the memo -- teachers who dare to veer from the scripted curriculum are at risk of being fired, and they will not find any protection from the law.”
The Huffington Post: Kevin Welner: Teachers: Gagged but Accountable?
“A veer in the wind induced them to slack off sheets, and five minutes afterward a sudden veer from the opposite quarter caught all three schooners aback, and those on shore could see the boom-tackles being slacked away or cast off on the jump.”
“But the subscription model will begin to show its age as development and service costs increase, and as audiences veer from the significant time and financial obligations these games command.”
“The proceedings veer from the comically absurd to the fervently passionate as a host of unusual witnesses (Jeff Daniels, Mary Louise Parker, Treat Williams, Alessandro Nivola) pit generation against generation and art against fear in front of conservative Judge Clayton Horn (Bob Balaban).”
“There are many people that veer from the straight and narrow that are capable of rehabilitation and every effort should be provided to assist them in acheiving this.”
“But as I veer from the 'tomboy/jeans/trainers/tshirt' to 'fairly feminine without being too girly' in my everyday life, I'm not always sure how to present myself in some science contexts.”
“But why, if I'm a gamer who typically seeks out innovative titles that veer from the beaten path, did I allow myself to be influenced by the words of a few reviewers?”
“We had to stay with it, we didn't veer from the game plan at all and we got better and better as the game went on.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘veer’.
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Words
phantasmagoria, eviscerate, avast, simulacrum, varicose, oblique, gestalt, ersatz, vernal, vivace, stellate, synecdoche and 321 more...
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movement (fast)
words describing fast action or movement
( open list, randomness, descriptive )
related:
http://www.wordnik.com...hurry, run, scamper, skip, stride, stampede, trample, scramble, dart, spring, spin, sprint and 141 more...
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movement (slow)
words describing slow action or movement
( open list, randomness, descriptive )
related:
http://www.wordnik.co...creep, crawl, plod, slouch, idle, lumber, tiptoe, bend, amble, mosey, saunter, loiter and 117 more...
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fancy essay words
hiatus, ontology, exegesis, hermeneutics, dialectics, demiurge, ascertain, contention, eschatological, synecdoche, centripetal, centrifugal and 96 more...
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Notable
undulate, priaprism, alphanumeric, conjure, love, roughshod, helpless, palatial, chortle, swimmingly, mustachioed, symbiotic and 21 more...
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Verbs animating cars
Verbs that tell us what the car is doing. Some are common, others are more interesting.
drive, race, start, stop, screech, turn, park, crash, zoom, wash, repair, rusting and 35 more...
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Words That Can Be Typed Entirely With...
Words made of the following: qwertasdfgzxcvb. I've stood on the shoulders of giants... users mollusque and reesetee made similar lists before I even existed on Wordnik. :)
stewardesses, red tea, waves, axes, wrest, qat, waver, created, dressed, stress, crater, vexes and 50 more...
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the first list
an immense, grandiloquent list that loads like a thousand years sentence in stone. new words are in the other lists.
ridiculous, brummagem, predicament, sanctimonious, vapid, eschew, admonish, auspicious, capitulation, enumerate, lachrymose, tenet and 1648 more...
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GCI
spinster, maiden, happy-go-lucky, homonym, ill-at-ease, saw red, out of sorts, hot under the collar, taken aback, pen-names, alias, shoelaces and 378 more...
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The Sog Collection
My big word list.
chaos, flaccid, empirical, flotsam, cacophony, grumble, assuage, awe, romance, mortality, coalesce, fortuitous and 3282 more...
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fifi
verbs Adj Adv noun
indulge, convene, solve, dissolve, prospect, prospective, allege, resolve, accountable, administration, amid, agenda and 407 more...
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Reading Reading
Words from the works of Peter Reading - at least one from each (except the Schwitters-esque erosions, cut-ups etc).
overbright, pimpled, muskiness, effuse, stoup, maul, unlevel, viscid, perfidious, glibly, aloes, drouth and 449 more...
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samoritan's Words
moxie, zarf, crepuscular, serenity, halcyon, powerfuller, instant classic, abecedary, trilobite, doomsters, 'da bome, evanescence and 149 more...
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amy's GRE 2012
gimmicks, kowtow, unpretentious, skeptical, cynical, somber, prevaricate, equivocate, requisite, embellish, impregnable, procrastinate and 307 more...
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stpeter's Words
abase, abasement, abashed, abdicate, aberrant, abeyance, abhor, abhorrent, abide, abject, ablation, abnegation and 3536 more...
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OED word of the Day
Just like it says
majority, plasm, apal, statin, legerdemain, leap year, daffodil, maternal, key worker, jojoba, skelf, pose and 101 more...
Tweets
Looking for tweets for veer.
bilby
Toward the most pallid rim of cloudy noonday steering
Steadily, while the fluent glooms and grave
Lap us and lift, repulse, and pause—the wild and veering
Will of the loving and reluctant wave.
- John Hall Wheelock, 'Storm and Sun'.
Sep 21, 2009
travismcdermott 1582 N. LICHEFIELD tr. Castanheda's Conq. E. Ind. 73 And after that the winde verred sic to the Southwest they bare with the same. Jul 29, 2008
yarb Citation on towpath. Jun 22, 2008