1 [U,sing.] the way in which you deal with a particular situation; the direction of your words or thoughts:
a complete / sudden change of tack * It was a brave decision to change tack in the middle of the project. * When threats failed, she decided to try / take a different tack. * His thoughts wandered off on another tack. * I find gentle persuasion is the best tack.
2 [C,U] (technical) the direction that a boat with sails takes as it sails at an angle to the wind in order to fill its sails:
They were sailing on (a) port / starboard tack (= with the wind coming from the left / right side).
3 [C] a small nail with a sharp point and a flat head, used especially for fixing a carpet to the floor:
a carpet tack
compareNAILn.(2)
4 [C] (AmE) = DRAWINGPIN
seealsoBLU-TACK
5 [C] a long loose stitch used for holding pieces of fabric together temporarily, before you sew them finally
6 [U] (technical) the equipment that you need for riding a horse, such as a SADDLE and BRIDLE:
a tack room (= the room where this equipment is kept)
IDIOMS see BRASS
Part of speech: verb
1 [VN+adv./prep.] to fasten sth in place with a tack or tacks:
The carpet was tacked to the floor.
2 [VN] to fasten pieces of fabric together temporarily with long, loose stitches before sewing it finally:
She tacked the sleeve of the blouse into the armhole.
3 [V] (technical) to change the direction of a sailing boat so that the wind blows onto the sails from the opposite side; to do this several times in order to travel in the direction that the wind is coming from
PHRASALVERBS
tack sth<->on
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About this entry
This is a English–English dictionary entry.
Sourced from Main Dictionary in Lughet's collection.
This word also appears under other sources in Lughet's collection — see the list below.
This entry for tack is sourced from Main Dictionary, one of the dictionaries and corpora merged into Lughet.
Is tack a noun, verb, or something else?
In this entry, tack is tagged as noun.
Does tack appear elsewhere on Lughet?
Yes — tack appears under other sources or language pairs in Lughet's collection. See the list below.
What is Lughet?
Lughet is a free trilingual dictionary covering nearly five million entries across Uyghur, Chinese, and English, drawn from more than ten source dictionaries and corpora.
