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Leeway   /lˈiwˌeɪ/   Listen
Leeway

noun
1.
(of a ship or plane) sideways drift.
2.
A permissible difference; allowing some freedom to move within limits.  Synonyms: allowance, margin, tolerance.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Leeway" Quotes from Famous Books



... succeeded in bringing her two masts into line, so that the pair were now dead ahead of her. Having accomplished this much, the swimmer concluded that he might safely take a rest, for the brig, being close-hauled, would be certain to be making more or less leeway; and it was quite possible that she would drive to leeward at least as fast as they did, if not faster, he therefore threw himself over on his back, requesting his companion to keep an eye on the approaching brig, and report to him her progress from ...
— Dick Leslie's Luck - A Story of Shipwreck and Adventure • Harry Collingwood

... a number of aeroplane constructing firms that had managed to emerge from the lean years 1912-1913 with sufficient manufacturing plant to give a hand in making up the leeway of construction when War broke out. Gradually the motor-car firms came in, turning their body-building departments to plane and fuselage construction, which enabled them to turn out the complete planes engined and ready for the field. The coach-building trade soon joined in and came ...
— A History of Aeronautics • E. Charles Vivian

... deferral &c. v.; postponement, adjournment, prorogation, retardation, respite, pause, reprieve, stay of execution; protraction, prolongation; Fabian policy, medecine expectante[Fr], chancery suit, federal case; leeway; high time; moratorium, holdover. V. be late &c. adj.; tarry, wait, stay, bide, take time; dawdle &c. (be inactive) 683; linger, loiter; bide one's time, take one's time; gain time; hang fire; stand over, lie over. put off, defer, delay, lay over, suspend; table [parliamentary]; shift off, stave ...
— Roget's Thesaurus

... my wittles more, now that an honest grace can be said over 'em. An' when you read the Bible, you needn't read the cussin' parts, if yer don't want to. I'll read 'em to myself hereafter. I'll give you all the leeway that an old curmudgeon like myself kin; and I expect to take a sight o' comfort in seein' you goin' on ...
— A Knight Of The Nineteenth Century • E. P. Roe

... go into details and explain that the "nice quiet lodging" was a third-floor rear whose gables gave David's six feet of length but little leeway. It was quiet because the third floor was not heated, and its occupants therefore stayed away as much as possible. His services as waiter were required only at dinner time, in exchange for which he received that meal. His breakfast and ...
— David Dunne - A Romance of the Middle West • Belle Kanaris Maniates

... no doubt of that, for gradually we were eating toward the wind—but we made considerable leeway as well. Handy Solomon, taut as the weather rigging, took his little advantages one by one like precious gifts. Light there was none; the land was blotted out by the steam and murk which had crept to sea and now was hurled back by the wind. All we could do was ...
— The Mystery • Stewart Edward White and Samuel Hopkins Adams

... that strange continent. And then, suddenly, the man with me clutched my shoulder, and pointed into the darkness upon our bow, and thus I discovered that we had come nearer to the weed than the bo'sun and the second mate had intended; they, without doubt, having miscalculated our leeway. At this, I turned and sang out to the bo'sun that we were near to running upon the weed, and, in the same moment, he shouted to the helmsman to luff, and directly afterwards our starboard side was brushing against the great outlying ...
— The Boats of the "Glen Carrig" • William Hope Hodgson

... brace now drags across my shins, and now the bight of a lee-spanker brail salutes me, not lovingly, across the face. The captain and officers are viewing the gallant vessel with intense anxiety, and scrutinising every evolution that she is making. How does she answer her helm? Beautifully. What leeway does she make? Scarce perceptible. The log is hove repeatedly,—seven, seven-and-a-half, close-hauled. Stand by, the captain is going to work her himself. She advances head to the wind bravely, like a British soldier ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard

... reserved the right to enlighten them in his own time and in his own way. After all, hadn't they elected him and thus given him leeway to use his own judgment in ...
— Ten From Infinity • Paul W. Fairman

... her—was a very safe boat for a person of my height and weight, both buoyant and clever in a sea-way; but she was the most cross-grained, lopsided craft to manage. Do as you pleased, she always made more leeway than anything else, and turning round and round was the maneuver she was best at. Even Ben Gunn himself has admitted that she was "queer to handle till ...
— Treasure Island • Robert Louis Stevenson

... and Mysol there are sixty miles of open sea, and along this wide channel the east monsoon blows strongly; so that with native praus, which will not lay up to the wind, it requires some care in crossing. In order to give ourselves sufficient leeway, we sailed back from Wahai eastward, along the coast of Ceram, with the land-breeze; but in the morning (June 18th) had not gone nearly so far as I expected. My pilot, an old and experienced sailor, named Gurulampoko, assured me there was a current setting to the eastward, ...
— The Malay Archipelago - Volume II. (of II.) • Alfred Russel Wallace

... /n./ A value or parameter that is varied in an ad hoc way to produce the desired result. The terms 'tolerance' and {slop} are also used, though these usually indicate a one-sided leeway, such as a buffer that is made larger than necessary because one isn't sure exactly how large it needs to be, and it is better to waste a little space than to lose completely for not having enough. A fudge factor, on the other hand, can often be tweaked in more than one direction. A good ...
— The Jargon File, Version 4.0.0

... Russia who won the warm friendship of Americans. Of course, those were short friendships. But men live a lot in a small space in war. One day a young second lieutenant—and those were rare in the British uniforms, for the British War Office had given the commanding general generous leeway in adding local rank to the under officers—had come out to a distant sector to estimate the actual needs in signal equipment. He rode a Russian horse to visit the outpost line of the city. He rode in a reindeer sled to ...
— The History of the American Expedition Fighting the Bolsheviki - Campaigning in North Russia 1918-1919 • Joel R. Moore

... of what happened, Cloud defended his action, then and thereafter. Damnitall, he had to take the eight-point-three second reading! Another tenth of a second and his bomb wouldn't have fitted—he didn't have the five percent leeway he wanted, remember. And no, he couldn't wait for another match, either. His screens were leaking like sieves, and if he had waited for another chance they would have picked him up fried to a greasy cinder ...
— The Vortex Blaster • Edward Elmer Smith

... impressively. "Feed her ad lib. Give her all she'll swallow. It's the leeway she's got to make up;" and he turned his eyes toward the kitchen door. ...
— The Devil's Garden • W. B. Maxwell

... lines are not false to the general view of the poet's function, but they leave us leeway to quarrel over the nature of the reflection mentioned, just as we quarrel over the exact connotations of Plato's and Aristotle's word, imitation. Even if we hold to the narrower meaning of imitation, there are a few poets who intimate that imitation alone is their aim in writing ...
— The Poet's Poet • Elizabeth Atkins

... hove to on the port tack under upper-topsails and foresail. The wind had come out of the south-west, and our leeway was setting us down upon the land. Captain West gave orders to the mate to stand by to wear ship. Both watches had been taking in sail, so that both watches were on ...
— The Mutiny of the Elsinore • Jack London

... canvas was taken in, and now the vessel lay helpless and unmanageable in the trough of the sea, not minding her helm at all, while the wind blew a perfect hurricane. The vessel being very light, loaded with cotton, made much leeway, and though we had worn ship four times during the preceding night, hoping, if possible, to weather some shoals which the captain judged were near, and to make Chesapeake Bay, where we might have a clear beach ...
— The Wonders of Prayer - A Record of Well Authenticated and Wonderful Answers to Prayer • Various

... laid for Kerguelen Island, but we went too far north to see it, as for two weeks the wind was south-easterly and southerly, and the leeway we made when sailing close-hauled took us every day a little to the north of east. When we were in the same waters in 1910, there was gale after gale; then we did not put in at Kerguelen on account of the ...
— The South Pole, Volumes 1 and 2 • Roald Amundsen

... take an observation, which I very much regretted, as the captain's quadrant was in the cabin; but from the day of setting sail from the island of the savages I had kept a dead reckoning, and as I knew pretty well now how much leeway the schooner made, I hoped to hit the Coral Island without much difficulty. In this I was the more confident that I knew its position on the chart (which I understood was a very good one), and so had ...
— The Coral Island - A Tale Of The Pacific Ocean • R. M. Ballantyne

... so light from scant feeding that he cannot fly against the wind. If he would go back to his starting point while the March winds are out, he must needs come down close to the ground and yewyaw towards his objective, making leeway like an old boat ...
— Secret of the Woods • William J. Long

... discrimination existed in the NROTC system. Unlike the Army and Air Force programs, reserve officer training in the Navy depended to a great extent on state selection committees dominated by civilians. These committees exercised considerable leeway in selecting candidates to fill their state's annual NROTC quota, and their decisions were final. Not one Negro served on any of the state committees. In fact, fourteen of the fifty-two colleges selected for reserve officer ...
— Integration of the Armed Forces, 1940-1965 • Morris J. MacGregor Jr.

... been made so tortuous by suggestions, ideas, yes, demands made upon him in the work of the Harrisburg panels upon which he was engaged, that a commission in which he was to have free scope, his brush full leeway, with no one making suggestions but himself and Mrs. Abbey, seemed like a dream. When he explained this, Bok assured him that was exactly what he was offering him: a piece of work, the subject to be his own selection, with the assurance of absolute liberty to carry out ...
— The Americanization of Edward Bok - The Autobiography of a Dutch Boy Fifty Years After • Edward William Bok (1863-1930)

... she said to Jane; "this thing tires him more and more every year. So I give him plenty of leeway. See him now." She looked over her shoulder, where, twenty feet away, her husband was talking across the bronze bar with another elderly man in ...
— With the Procession • Henry B. Fuller

... an hour's leeway." It was a soft lisp of sound that startled the group. The man had come by devious ways through the gullies of the Thornton field, around the corner of "The Barracks," and upon the porch. Those who knew him declared that "Whispering Urban" ...
— The Ramrodders - A Novel • Holman Day

... tendencies, we shall be drawn off to an undue regard of the content to the neglect of the expression. And yet, for very little children, there is unquestionably something lost by the formality and fixity of a written story. A story told has more spontaneity, allows more leeway to include the chance happenings or remarks of the children; it can be more intimately personal, more adapted to the particular occasion and to the particular child. Perhaps some time we shall achieve a fortunate compromise, a stepping stone between the story told and the story ...
— Here and Now Story Book - Two- to seven-year-olds • Lucy Sprague Mitchell

... got sort of used to it now. After all, there's a certain excitement about having a watch like this. You never know whether you're going to be late or early. If I have to catch a train I always allow thirty minutes leeway. It's twelve o'clock, all right. Solomon's quit." He nodded toward where the man in the blue overalls was unhitching the horse from the mower. "You can't fool Solomon on ...
— Left Tackle Thayer • Ralph Henry Barbour

... so that the shore seemed distant; this gave leeway for shipping of various kinds, large and small, and at one time I counted forty-five craft around us. Small sampans with three or four sails predominated. Our interest now centred not so much on shore ...
— Travels in the Far East • Ellen Mary Hayes Peck

... twice I heard him talking in an eager, muffled voice to himself, or to an imaginary court. But there can be no doubt the wind changed right round into the east, and that we were carried far down the Channel without any suspicion of the immense leeway we were making. I remember the kind of stupid perplexity with which I saw the dawn breaking over a grey waste of water, below, and realised that something was wrong. I was so stupid that it was only ...
— Tono Bungay • H. G. Wells



Words linked to "Leeway" :   ship, airplane, tolerance, drift, divergence, variance, plane, allowance, disagreement, margin, discrepancy, aeroplane



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