tack

4. VERB

If a sailing boat is tacking or if the people in it tack it, it is sailing towards a particular point in a series of sideways movements rather than in a straight line.

• We were tacking fairly close inshore.     
• The helmsman could tack the boat singlehanded.

.... Cobuild

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Noun.

1. [Naut] the course of a boat sailing obliquely into the wind, expressed in terms of the side of the boat against which the wind is blowing: on the port tack

2. a course of action or a policy: telling her to get off my back hadn't worked, so I took a different tack

Verb.

[Naut] to steer (a boat) on a zigzag course, so as to make progress against the wind [from tack rope used to secure a sail]

.... Collins Essential