careens

Verb

careen (third-person singular simple present careens, present participle careening, simple past and past participle careened)

1. (transitive) To heave a ship down on one side so as to expose the other, in order to clean it of barnacles and weed, or to repair it below the water line.
   • However, to avoid ſome inconveniencies relating to port duties, which would have been demanded in the port of Canton, and could not, in honour to the British flag, be complied with by us, he adviſed Mr Anſon to put into the harbour of Typa, about ſix miles from Macao, where he might careen his ſhip...1749 July, “Anſon's voyage of the world”, in The Scots Magazine, volume xi, pages 333-334
2. (intransitive) To tilt on one side.

   Synonyms:

   heel

3. (intransitive) To lurch or sway violently from side to side.
   • They were not motionless, but swayed to and fro above her head, thronging out of one sky-light into another, as if the universe and not the air-ship was careening.1909, E. M. Forster, “Chapter I”, in The Machine Stops
4. (intransitive) To tilt or lean while in motion.
5. (US, intransitive) To career, to move rapidly straight ahead, to rush carelessly.
6. (US, intransitive) To move swiftly and in an uncontrolled way.
   • The car in which I had taken Olivia to dinner and then out to the cemetery — a historic vehicle, even a monument of sorts, in the history of fellatio's advent onto the Winesburg campus in the second half of the twentieth century — went careening off to the side and turned end-over-end down Lower...2008, Philip Roth, Indignation

See all 7 meanings of careen