Word.ws English Dictionary

tack

UK/tæk/

tack noun: a small nail with a flat head.

tack: a small nail with a flat head
Image: S.J. de Waard, CC BY-SA 2.5, via Wikimedia Commons

Noun (1)

tack (countable and uncountable, plural tacks)

  1. A small nail with a flat head.
    • A tough test for even the strongest climber, it was new to the Tour de France this year, but its debut will be remembered for the wrong reasons after one of those spectators scattered carpet tacks on the road and induced around 30 punctures among the group of riders including Bradley Wiggins, the...2012 July 15, Richard Williams, “Tour de France 2012: Carpet tacks cannot put Bradley Wiggins off track”, in The Guardian
  2. A thumbtack.
  3. A loose seam used to temporarily fasten pieces of cloth.
  4. The lower corner on the leading edge of a sail relative to the direction of the wind.
  5. A course or heading that enables a sailing vessel to head upwind.
  6. (figuratively) A direction or course of action, especially a new one; a method or approach to solving a problem.
    • So stoutly held to tack by those near North-wales men;1612, Michael Drayton, chapter 11, in [John Selden], editor, Poly-Olbion. Or A Chorographicall Description of Tracts, Riuers, Mountaines, Forests, and Other Parts of this Renowned Isle of Great...
    • Maud Gonne’s letter about taking them off O’Connell street at night: disgrace to our Irish capital. Griffith’s paper is on the same tack now: an army rotten with venereal disease: overseas or halfseasover empire.1922 February 2, James Joyce, “[V]”, in Ulysses, Paris: Shakespeare and Company […], →OCLC
  7. The maneuver by which a sailing vessel turns its bow through the wind so that the wind changes from one side to the other.
    Synonyms:
    coming about
  8. The distance a sailing vessel runs between these maneuvers when working to windward; a board.
  9. A rope used to hold in place the foremost lower corners of the courses when the vessel is close-hauled; also, a rope employed to pull the lower corner of a studding sail to the boom.
  10. Any of the various equipment and accessories worn by horses in the course of their use as domesticated animals.
  11. The stickiness of a compound, related to its cohesive and adhesive properties.
    • The laminate adhesive has very aggressive tack and is hard to move once in place.
    • Letterpress and offset gloss varnishes normally have viscosities varying from 50 to 250 poises; they must stain the paper as little as possible, have insufficient tack to cause plucking, […]1959, E. A. Apps, Printing Ink Technology, page 415
  12. Food generally; fare, especially of the hard bread or breadlike kind.
    • Near-synonyms: biscuit, bread
    • But if a woman's got nothing but her fair fame to feed on, why, it's thin tack, and a donkey would die of it!1913, D[avid] H[erbert] Lawrence, Sons and Lovers, London: Duckworth & Co. […], →OCLC
    Synonyms:
    biscuit, bread
  13. That which is attached; a supplement; an appendix.
    • Some tacks had been made to money bills in King Charles's time.a. 1716 (date written), [Gilbert] Burnet, edited by [Gilbert Burnet Jr.], Bishop Burnet’s History of His Own Time. […], volume (please specify |volume=I or II), London: […] Thomas Ward […], published...
    • pay all taxes and subscribe tacks1849–1861, Thomas Babington Macaulay, The History of England from the Accession of James the Second, volume (please specify |volume=I to V), London: Longman, Brown, Green, and Longmans, →OCLC
  14. (obsolete) Confidence; reliance.
    • He should find[…]that there was tack in it, that it was solid silver, or silver that had strength in it.1651-1666, Joseph Caryl, Exposition of Job with Practical Observations

Verb

tack (third-person singular simple present tacks, present participle tacking, simple past and past participle tacked)

  1. (transitive) To nail (something) with a tack (small nail with a flat head).
    • The hallway smelt of boiled cabbage and old rag mats. At one end of it a colored poster, too large for indoor display, had been tacked to the wall.1949 June 8, George Orwell, Nineteen Eighty-Four, London: Secker & Warburg, →OCLC, Part I, Chapter I
  2. To sew/stitch with a tack (loose seam used to temporarily fasten pieces of cloth).
  3. To weld with initial small welds to temporarily fasten in preparation for full welding.
    Synonyms:
    tack weld
  4. To maneuver a sailing vessel so that its bow turns through the wind, i.e. the wind changes from one side of the vessel to the other.
    Synonyms:
    change tack
    Antonyms:
    wear, gybe
  5. (intransitive) To sail to windward using a series of alternate tacks across the wind.
    Synonyms:
    beat
    Antonyms:
    run
  6. To add something as an extra item.
    • to tack (something) onto (something)
    • In short, they tend to present Indian English as nothing more than "standard" English with a select collection of lexical peculiarities tacked on, as it were, many of which would be regarded as "errors" by prescriptivist language scholars.2012, James Lambert, “Beyond Hobson-Jobson: A new lexicography for Indian English”, in World Englishes, page 312
  7. Synonym of tack up (“to prepare a horse for riding by equipping it with a tack”).
    Synonyms:
    tack up
  8. (obsolete, slang) To join in wedlock.

Noun (2)

tack (plural tacks)

  1. A stain; a tache.
  2. (obsolete) A peculiar flavour or taint.
    • a musty tack

Noun (3)

tack (uncountable)

  1. (colloquial) That which is tacky; something cheap and gaudy.
    • For souvenirs – mostly outright tack and ethnicky textiles – try your bargaining skills at the shops and stalls on Binjiang Luand Zhengyang Jie, or the nightly street market spreading for about a block either side of Shanhu Bridge along Zhongshan Lu.2014, David Leffman, The Rough Guide to China

Noun (4)

tack (plural tacks)

  1. (Northern England, Scotland) A contract by which the use of a thing is set, or let, for hire; a lease.
    • In the Breadalbane papers, for example, there is a "tack" which was given by Sir John Campbell of Glenurchy to his "weil belouit" servant John M'Conoquhy V'Gregour, in the year 1530.1885, Lord Colin Campbell, The Crofter in History

Proper noun capitalized: Tack

Tack (plural Tacks)

  1. A surname.

tack meaning in Hindi, Tamil, Marathi and Urdu

tack in Hindi

small nail
कील kīl

tack in Tamil

பொருத்தாணி

tack in Marathi

टॅक

tack in Urdu

tack
کیل kīl
More languagesFewer languages
tack in Bengali
আটকানো, সেলাই করা, দিক পরিবর্তন
tack in Telugu
ట్యాక్
tack in Malayalam
ചെറുമുളളാണി, ഗതിമാറൽ, അനുബന്ധം, ചേർപ്പ്
tack in Kannada
ತಟ್ಟು ಮೊಳೆ, ದೂರ ಹೊಲಿಗೆ, ದೋಣಿಯ ಮಾರ್ಗ ಬದಲಾವಣೆ, ದೂರ ದೂರ ಹೊಲಿಗೆ
tack in Gujarati
ચૂંક cū̃k
tack in Odia
ଟ୍ଯ଼ାକ
tack in Nepali
ट्याक
tack in Persian
میخ

Examples of tack in a sentence

  • ‘I know it all right,’ Big Bil snarled, ‘but knowing and proving are two different tacks.’1960, J. E. Macdonnell, Don't Gimme the Ships, Melbourne: Horwitz Publications, page 124:
  • I thought that my refusing Barnard would alienate Botha, and decided that such a tack was too risky.1994, Nelson Mandela, Long Walk to Freedom: The Autobiography of Nelson Mandela, London: Abacus, published 2010, page 637:
  • When even cautious German politicians are questioning Nato’s ‘war-mongering’ actions, it’s clear that a new tack is required2016 June 19, Mary Dejevsky, “Isolating Russia isn’t working. The west needs a new approach”, in The Guardian:

All 40 example sentences with tack

Synonyms of tack

2 more synonymsFewer synonyms

Antonyms

All synonyms and antonyms of tack

Forms of tack

Noun
pluraltacks
alternative formtache
Verb
third-person singular presenttacks
present participletacking
past participletacked
pasttacked
Proper noun
pluralTacks

Past tense of tack: tacked

Plural of tack: tacks

Origin of tack

From Middle English tak, takke (“hook; staple; nail”), from Old Northern French taque (“nail, pin, peg”), from Frankish *takkō (“twig, branch, shoot”), of unknown origin, but possibly from Proto-Indo-European *dHgʰ-n-, from the root *déHgʰ- (“to pinch; to tear, rip, fray”). Cognate with Saterland Frisian Takke (“bough; branch; twig”), West Frisian takke (“branch”), tûk (“branch, smart, sharp”), Dutch tak (“twig; branch; limb”), German Zacke (“jag; prong; spike; tooth; peak”).

From Middle English takken (“to attach; nail”), from the noun (see above).

From an old or dialectal form of French tache. See techy. Doublet of tache.

Words formed from tack

Phrases with tack

8 more phrasesFewer phrases

Words that rhyme with tack

48 more rhymesFewer rhymes

Questions about tack

What does tack mean?
Tack means a small nail with a flat head.
What is tack in Hindi?
Tack in Hindi is कील (kīl). See Tack meaning in Hindi.
How do you use tack in a sentence?
‘I know it all right,’ Big Bil snarled, ‘but knowing and proving are two different tacks.’
What part of speech is tack?
Tack can be a noun, a verb or a proper noun.
How do you pronounce tack?
Tack is pronounced /tæk/ (UK).
What is the plural of tack?
The plural of tack is tacks.

Words near tack in the dictionary

  1. taciturnities
  2. taciturnity
  3. taciturnly
  4. taciturnous
  5. Tacitus
  6. tack
  7. tack about
  8. tack claw
  9. tack claws
  10. tack down
  11. tack lifter

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: tack (page history and authors); Tack (page history and authors); tack (Tamil Wiktionary) (page history and authors); tack (Marathi, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); کیل (Urdu) (page history and authors); tack (Bengali Wiktionary) (page history and authors); tack (Telugu, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); tack (Malayalam Wiktionary) (page history and authors); tack (Kannada Wiktionary) (page history and authors); tack (Odia, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); tack (Nepali, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license). 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.

Last updated:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: en-us-tack.ogg.

Cite this entry: “tack.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/tack. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.