Word.ws English Dictionary

righting arm

righting arm noun: the horizontal distance between the center of mass of a tilted vessel and the vertical line connecting its center of buoyancy and its metacentre (conventionally taken as positive if the aforementioned line lies on the low side of the center of mass, and negative if the line lies on the high side of the center of mass), measuring the strength of the vessel's tendency (or lack thereof) to return to an upright orientation.

righting arm: the horizontal distance between the center of mass of a tilted vessel and the vertical line...
Image: Old Moonraker, George William Herbert, CC BY-SA 2.5, via Wikimedia Commons

Noun

righting arm (plural righting arms)

  1. The horizontal distance between the center of mass of a tilted vessel and the vertical line connecting its center of buoyancy and its metacentre (conventionally taken as positive if the aforementioned line lies on the low side of the center of mass, and negative if the line lies on the high side of the center of mass), measuring the strength of the vessel's tendency (or lack thereof) to return to an upright orientation.
    • Figure 60 shows the downflooding angles for the downflooding points described above, plus the angle at which the edge of the freeboard deck would have been immersed (about 15°). The downflooding angles are superimposed on two righting arm curves. The upper curve is the righting arm for El Faro in...2017 December 12, National Transportation Safety Board, “1.12.10 Postaccident Analysis of Stability, Structures, and Sinking”, in Marine Accident Report: Sinking of US Cargo Vessel SS El Faro...

Forms of righting arm

pluralrighting arms

Questions about righting arm

What does righting arm mean?
Righting arm means the horizontal distance between the center of mass of a tilted vessel and the vertical line connecting its center of buoyancy and its metacentre (conventionally taken as positive if the aforementioned line lies on the low side of the center of mass, and negative if the line lies on the high side of the center of mass), measuring the strength of the vessel's tendency (or lack thereof) to return to an upright orientation.
What part of speech is righting arm?
Righting arm is a noun.
What is the plural of righting arm?
The plural of righting arm is righting arms.

Words near righting arm in the dictionary

  1. rightified
  2. rightifies
  3. rightify
  4. rightifying
  5. righting
  6. righting arm
  7. righting arms
  8. righting the ship
  9. rightings
  10. rightio
  11. rightish

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: righting arm (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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