wear ship

1. 1.

   turn away from the wind

   “The sailors decided it was time to wear ship”

   Broadersail

   navigation

Questions about wear ship

What does wear ship mean?

wear ship means "turn away from the wind".

Is wear ship a common word?

wear ship 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.