careen
English
WOTD – 26 November 2006
Etymology
Late 16th century, from French carene (“keel”), from Genoese Ligurian carena, from Latin carīna (“keel of a ship”). Doublet of carene and carina.
Pronunciation
- IPA(key): /kəˈɹiːn/
Audio (US) (file) - Rhymes: -iːn
Verb
careen (third-person singular simple present careens, present participle careening, simple past and past participle careened)
- (nautical, transitive) To heave a ship down on one side so as to expose the other, in order to clean it of barnacles and weed, or to repair it below the water line.
- (nautical, intransitive) To tilt on one side.
- Synonym: heel
- To lurch or sway violently from side to side.
- 1909, E. M. Forster, “Chapter I”, in The Machine Stops:
- They were not motionless, but swayed to and fro above her head, thronging out of one sky-light into another, as if the universe and not the air-ship was careening.
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- To tilt or lean while in motion. [from late 19th c.]
- (chiefly US) To career, to move rapidly straight ahead, to rush carelessly. [from at least early 20th c.]
- (chiefly US) To move swiftly and in an uncontrolled way.
- 2008, Philip Roth, Indignation:
- The car in which I had taken Olivia to dinner and then out to the cemetery — a historic vehicle, even a monument of sorts, in the history of fellatio's advent onto the Winesburg campus in the second half of the twentieth century — went careening off to the side and turned end-over-end down Lower Main until it exploded in flames...
- 2016 December 20, Katie Rife, “Passengers strains the considerable charms of Chris Pratt and Jennifer Lawrence”, in The Onion AV Club:
- He tries for a lot of things, careening wildly from earnest romance to feel-good comedy to hackneyed suspense, all the while leaving it up to the audience to suss out the moral complexity and existential terror underneath the glossy surface.
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Usage notes
The "move rapidly" senses are considered by some, especially in British English, to be an error due to confusion with "career".
Derived terms
- careenage
Translations
to heave a ship down on one side so as to expose the other
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to tilt on one side
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to sway violently from side to side or lurch
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to tilt or lean while in motion
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Noun
careen (plural careens)
- (nautical) The position of a ship laid on one side.
Anagrams
- Cerean, carene, crenae, enrace, recane
Spanish
Verb
careen
- inflection of carear:
- third-person plural present subjunctive
- third-person plural imperative