In navigation, a spread of canvas, or an assemblage of several breadths of canvas, sewed together with a double seam at the borders, and edged with a cord called the bolt-rope, to be extended on the masts or yards for receiving the impulse of wind by which a ship is driven. The principal sails are the courses or lower salts, the top-sails and top-gallant-sails.

In poetry.

A ship or other vessel; used in the singular for a single ship, or as a collective name for many. We saw a sail at the leeward. We saw three sail on our star-board quarter. The fleet consists of twenty sail. To loose sails, to unfurl them. To make sail, to extend an additional quantity of sail. To set sail, to expand or spread the sails; and hence; to begin a voyage. To shorten sail, to reduce the extent of sail, or take in a part.

To strike sail, to lower the sails suddenly, as in saluting or in sudden gusts of wind.

To bate show or pomp.

To be impelled or driven forward by the action of wind upon sails, as a ship on water. A ship sails from New York for Liverpool. She sails ten knots an hour. She sails well close-hauled.

To be conveyed in a vessel on water; to pass by water. We sailed from London to Canton.

To swim. Little dolphins, when they sail in the vast shadow of the British whale.

To set sail; to begin a voyage. We sailed from New York for Havre, June 15, 1824. We sailed from Cowes for New York, May 10, 1825.

To be carried in the air, as a balloon.

To pass smoothly along. As is a wing’d messenger from heaven, when he bestrides the lazy pacing clouds, and sails upon the bosom of the air.

To fly without striking with the wings.

To pass or move upon in a ship, by means of sails. A thousand ships were mann’d to sail the sea.

To fly through . Sublime she sails th’ aerial space, and mounts the winged gales.