Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- n. Any of various relatively small sailing or motor-driven vessels, generally with smart graceful lines, used for pleasure cruises or racing.
- v. To sail, cruise, or race in a yacht.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- n. A vessel propelled either by sails or by steam, most often light or comparatively small, but sometimes of large size, used for pleasure-trips or for racing, or as a vessel of state to convey persons of distinction by water. There are two distinct types of sailing yacht: the racer with large spars and sails and fine lines, but sacrificing comfort to speed; and the commodious well-proportioned cruising-yacht. Sailing yachts are seldom or never of a more elaborate rig than that of the schooner; but steam-vessels of every class from launches up are common as yachts.
- To sail or cruise in a yacht.
Wiktionary
- n. A slick and light ship for making pleasure trips or racing on water, having sails but often motor-powered. At times used as a residence offshore on a dock (Wikipedia).
- n. Any vessel used for private, noncommercial purposes.
- v. intransitive To sail, voyage, or race in a yacht.
GNU Webster's 1913
- n. (Naut.) A light and elegantly furnished vessel, used either for private parties of pleasure, or as a vessel of state to convey distinguished persons from one place to another; a seagoing vessel used only for pleasure trips, racing, etc.
- v. To manage a yacht; to voyage in a yacht.
WordNet 3.0
- n. an expensive vessel propelled by sail or power and used for cruising or racing
- v. travel in a yacht
Etymologies
- Ca. 1557; variant of yaught, earlier yeaghe ("light, fast-sailing ship"), from obsolete Dutch jaght(e) ("hunt") (modern jacht), short for jaghtschip, jageschip ("light sailing vessel, fast pirate ship"), literally, "pursuit ship", compound of jagen ("to hunt, chase") and schip ("ship") (see ship), from Proto-Germanic *jagōnan (cf. West Frisian jeie, German jagen, Swedish jaga), from Proto-Indo-European *yegʰo- (compare Irish éad ("jealousy"), Russian ярый (âryj, "furious"), Albanian gjah ("hunt"), Ancient Greek ζητέω (zētéō, "to search, seek"), Sanskrit यवन (yāvana, "barbarian; agressor"), यत्न (yātna, "zeal")). (Wiktionary)
- Probably obsolete Norwegian jagt, from Middle Low German jacht, short for jachtschip : jagen, to chase (from Old High German jagōn) + schip, ship. (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)
Examples
“Now when many individuals hear the term yacht club they see a collection of yacht owners gathering often to talk about their marine experiences.”
“Men stopped wearing hats overnight, and churches may empty in a heartbeat, but a yacht is forever.”
“The yacht is capable of 45 miles an hour with its 4,000 horsepower engine and when the Italians try to make a getaway in their skiff, the Streak streaks for them, "pulsing and vibrating and roaring like a thing alive" until the thieves haul in their oars and surrender.”
“. . .all his race rose up before him in a mighty phantasmagoria. . .”
“The NEA spent $11,797 to charter a yacht from a Hollywood, Fla., company.”
Sound Politics: Joni Balter: Washington's laziest editorial writer?
“She pursued, It hath reached me, O auspicious King, that when the King of France missed his daughter they brought him tidings of her, saying, “Thy yacht is lost”; and he replied,”
“The folk replied, O King, we have found ten men slain on the sea-shore, and the royal yacht is missing.”
“At the time of her hiring, according to Anders, she asked HP to pay to move her yacht from the East Coast to the West Coast through the Panama Canal.”
“Many people think that was his name because it's piratical, and so it was appropriate that he called his yacht Corsair.”
“After that he called his yacht the _Gloria_, in imitation of her name, and sometimes took the girl out on the sea.”
“The yacht is now lying at anchor in a deep coffee-colored stream, near a picturesque Malay village on stilts, surrounded by very extensive groves of palms.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘yacht’.
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Yazhinni Spelling bee
tongue, stallion, scruple, salinity, schedule, rouge, populist, Permian, perspire, pasteurize, multitude, mournful and 227 more...
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transportation
change, car, vehicle, cart, baggage, waiting room, ticket, bicycle, life jacket, railway, shared taxi, ferry and 27 more...
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Unwording
Outlawed words and books, like this.
samizdat, satanic verses, profanity, oriental, antilanguage, biddy, aviatrix, squaw, deaf-mute, border patrolman, cassandra, niggardly and 45 more...
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Out to Sea
If I had a boat
I'd go out on the ocean
And if I had a pony
I'd ride him on my boat
And we could all together
Go out on the ocean
Me upon my pony on my boat.boat, ship, skiff, barge, canoe, catamaran, yacht, scow, lifeboat, launch, ketch, dory and 303 more...
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zanshin's Words
gargoyle, ennui, paradigm, aardvark, verisimilitude, ghoti, tenacity, nescience, guillemet, squonk, maven, moxie and 210 more...
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aliko's Words
deli, turkey, bodrum, deniz, sunny, seks, tatil, hava, zeeman, captain, kapitein, kaptan and 256 more...
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dyy's Words
ambivalence, irony, double-edged sword, paradox, struggle, plunge, buoy, pigeon-hole, ultimately, status quo, fuel, undermine and 230 more...
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elizacole's Words
isomorphic, endemic, tmesis, fillip, antedate, avoirdupois, jeremiad, hypnagogic, antediluvian, fuck, reification, raconteur and 251 more...
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Unusual and Random Words
My Favourite Kind
quagmire, soliloquy, aardvark, topaz, ardent, exquisite, pyromania, pyre, extravagant, obscure, quetzal, quibble and 199 more...
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mandarine's Words
antepenultimate, metonymy, synecdoche, pop, kern, inherit, clique, scrumptious, macerate, murmur, kerning, veranda and 1068 more...
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Favorite Five-Letter Words
Just what it sounds like. My favorites. Five letters.
ennui, barfy, samba, schwa, beefy, chunk, queef, spasm, skulk, bowel, elbow, fruit and 235 more...
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Only on Wordie/Wordnik
Okay, mostly on Wordie. But it's more fun here anyway.
brannock device, polari, stupidhead, in toto, nounal, flustrated, stuffocate, firkin, full-assed, placeholder name, pro-text, cheesequake and 408 more...
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Sarah's list
bog, ginnel, screw, haberdashery, nincompoop, yacht, you sound fun are...
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and Bristol fashion
being items related to boats, ships, sailing, nautical and naval lore &c.
sloop, frigate, brigantine, brig, grog, schooner, rig, sail, canvas, jib, forestay, cutter and 150 more...
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smock, smock, smock!
things that are just fun to say
trivet, onomatopoeia, whippersnapper, grout, smock, smirk, kibosh, fracas, gaggle, denizen, smorgasbord, soliloquy and 104 more...
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Palabrarium
The delicious wonderful words that I love terribly dearly and without which, the world would be a less inventive and worthwhile place. Also, ostensibly, the reason 1984 and esperanto secretly suck.
panoply, footpad, piccalilli, snickersnee, marl, hispid, greengage, slumgullion, golliwog, mumbletypeg, circumlocution, quiescent and 366 more...
Tweets
Looking for tweets for yacht.

ruzuzu You walked into the party like you were walking onto a yacht. Dec 21, 2010
bilby There's a cafe by the marina here called Yotz. Does that help? Dec 22, 2009
mjk Why isn't yacht spelled yaght like bight/Bucht, cough/Keuch, daughter/Tochter, eight/acht, freight/Fracht, haught/hoch, laughter/Lachter, might/Macht, naught/nichts, sought/sucht, weight/Gewicht, etc.? Dec 22, 2009
reesetee Really? I think it looks snazzy. Oct 30, 2007
chained_bear I really like this word, and like the pronunciation and everything. But it looks like it feels, and kinda sounds, to throw up.
I don't know why. Oct 30, 2007
reesetee See cavalry (oddly enough) for some entertaining alternate spellings of this word. Oct 30, 2007
reesetee WOW! Nice riposte and exquisite avoidance of the question! I doff my hat to you, sir.
Well, I'm not wearing one, but if I were, I'd be doffing, by God. Oct 29, 2007
uselessness What's the point? When not even death can stop true love, why bother? ;-) Oct 29, 2007
chained_bear ...but what about pirates??? Oct 29, 2007
uselessness What, every word of that was true! ;-) Oct 29, 2007
reesetee You see? The man's an artist. Oct 29, 2007
skipvia I am without words, U. Oct 29, 2007
uselessness Actually, the word chasing refers to the pursuit of pleasure. Similar to the modern-day pleasure cruise, which is much slower than one might expect from "cruising." Of course the root of such phrases stems from Solomon's book of wisdom, Ecclesiastes, in which he declares that "everything is vanity, a chasing after the wind," inexorably tying the pleasures of the world to the breeze, and by extension, sailboats. Oct 29, 2007
reesetee Are you taking uselessness' madeupical etymology course, chained_bear? ;-) Oct 29, 2007
chained_bear Well, if you're a pirate, you'd naturally want a fast ship. And if you're a king, you'd also want the fastest ship you could get.
Let me pause here for a refreshing break.
"Every ship but your four fastest, you mean."
"Yes, naturally not those four."
Thank you. This break brought to you by the word page dulcet.
And the best way to show off a fast ship, if you're a pirate, is to hunt/catch a whole lotta others. But once the golden age of piracy is over, what's left to do? If you still like fast ships, I guess you need to start having yacht races. Oct 29, 2007
reesetee Possibly! The etymology mentions it in reference to "light sailing vessels" used especially for royalty, "fast piratical ships," and those used for hunting. Apparently the meaning shifted at some point to refer to racing craft as well. Oct 29, 2007
chained_bear That is cool. I wonder if by "chasing" they could also have meant "racing." Oct 28, 2007
reesetee It is, isn't it, SoG? I was curious so I checked the etymology. It comes from the Dutch jaght or jacht, as in jaghtschip, which literally meant "ship for chasing." Presumably not a pleasure craft as we think of it nowadays. :-) Oct 28, 2007
sonofgroucho What a strange little word this is! Oct 28, 2007