trim one's sails

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Modify one's stand, adapt to circumstances, as in His advisers told him to trim his sails before he alienated voters and bungled the election completely. This metaphoric expression alludes to adjusting a ship's sails to take full advantage of prevailing winds. [Late 1700s]

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Words nearby trim one's sails

trimmer, trimmer arch, trimming, trimodal, trimolecular, trim one's sails, trimonthly, trimorph, trimorphism, trimotor, trim rail

How to use trim one's sails in a sentence

Added to drinking water at concentrations of around one part per million, fluoride ions stick to dental plaque.
Anti-Fluoriders Are The OG Anti-Vaxxers|Michael Schulson|July 27, 2016|DAILY BEAST
In his view, a writer has only one duty: to be present in his books.
Houellebecq’s Incendiary Novel Imagines France With a Muslim President|Pierre Assouline|January 9, 2015|DAILY BEAST
Yet this, in the end, is a book from which one emerges sad, gloomy, disenchanted, at least if we agree to take it seriously.
Houellebecq’s Incendiary Novel Imagines France With a Muslim President|Pierre Assouline|January 9, 2015|DAILY BEAST
The fear of violence should not determine what one does or does not say.
Trolls and Martyrdom: Je Ne Suis Pas Charlie|Arthur Chu|January 9, 2015|DAILY BEAST

The al Qaeda-linked gunmen shot back, but only managed to injure one officer before they were taken out.
France Kills Charlie Hebdo Murderers|Nico Hines|January 9, 2015|DAILY BEAST
Practise gliding in the form of inflection, or slide, from one extreme of pitch to another.
Expressive Voice Culture|Jessie Eldridge Southwick
He alludes to it as one of their evil customs and used by them to produce insensibility.
Tobacco; Its History, Varieties, Culture, Manufacture and Commerce|E. R. Billings.
There was a rumor that Alessandro and his father had both died; but no one knew anything certainly.
Ramona|Helen Hunt Jackson
Truth is a torch, but one of enormous size; so that we slink past it in rather a blinking fashion for fear it should burn us.
Pearls of Thought|Maturin M. Ballou
Under the one-sixth they appear as slender, highly refractive fibers with double contour and, often, curled or split ends.
A Manual of Clinical Diagnosis|James Campbell Todd