bear down on

Questions about bear down on

What does bear down on mean?

bear down on means "sail towards another vessel, of a ship". That is the primary sense; the word has 2 in total, listed in full on this page.

What is another word for bear down on?

Close synonyms include bear down upon, drag down, bear down, press down on, weigh down. Each sense on this page lists its own synonyms, because a word with several meanings rarely has one substitute that works for all of them.

Is bear down on a common word?

bear down on is banded "Uncommon" — turns up in careful writing rather than conversation. The band comes from how often the word appears in a large corpus of everyday English, not from an editor's impression.