sailboat
Americannoun
-
sailboats
plural
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Nouns
Etymology
Origin of sailboat
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How does sailboat compare to similar and commonly confused words? Explore the most common comparisons:
Explanation
A sailboat is a relatively small boat that uses wind power to propel it forward. When the wind is strong enough, sailboats can move very quickly. Ahoy! Sailboats, called sailing boats in Britain, can have anywhere from one to as many as five sails. Larger water vessels that move using sails are distinguished as "sailing ships" rather than sailboats. You might take a tour on a schooner, a large sailboat with two masts, or take a sailing lesson in a small, single-sail dingy. No matter which kind of sailboat, it moves by angling its sails into the wind.
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
The ship lacks the usual clanging metal rigging of a modern sailboat, so the two-hour, $80 journey was nearly silent.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 15, 2026
Maybe you have looked at the clouds and imagined a sailboat, a seahorse, or even your great-aunt Rosemary staring back at you.
From Science Daily ● May 14, 2026
Vaughan had been on the boat with her husband and two children, aged 12 and eight, and had been sunbathing when the motorboat crashed into a sailboat carrying party-goers.
From Barron's ● Nov. 21, 2025
A pilot friend who is crossing the Atlantic from the Canary Islands in a sailboat this month called cruise ships a “floating petri dish.‘
From The Wall Street Journal ● Nov. 19, 2025
It was a sailboat, a big one, with two masts, but it was sailing away from us.
From "Adrift" by Paul Griffin
He had a Clark Gable pencil mustache, raced sailboats, cavorted with the late communist leader Fidel Castro in Cuba, and at one point married Academy Award-winning actress and activist Jane Fonda.
From Los Angeles Times ● May 6, 2026
But the two sailboats have yet to reach Cuba.
From Barron's ● Mar. 27, 2026
It is water-repellent and was originally used on sailboats, external to make them glide better before being introduced to skiing in the 1980s.
From BBC ● Feb. 10, 2026
MFA’s example from that summer, “Three Boys on a Beached Dory,” is a charming grisaille work depicting the children, wearing broad-brimmed hats, looking at sailboats on the horizon.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Dec. 11, 2025
Jamie’s first job out of Duke University had been delivering sailboats to rich people up and down the East Coast.
From "The Big Short" by Michael Lewis
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
