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steer

verbnounnounverbcommon in dialogue

  • United Kingdom//stɪː//
  • United Kingdom//stɪjə//
  • United States//stɪɹ//
  • United States//stɪɚ//
  • Australia//stɪə//

To guide the course of a vessel, vehicle, aircraft etc. (by means of a device such as a rudder, paddle, or steering wheel).

verb

  1. 1

    To guide the course of a vessel, vehicle, aircraft etc. (by means of a device such as a rudder, paddle, or steering wheel).

    The boat steered towards the iceberg.

    I steered homeward.

  2. 2

    To guide the course of a vessel, vehicle, aircraft etc. (by means of a device such as a rudder, paddle, or steering wheel).

    I find it very difficult to steer a skateboard.

    When planning the boat trip, we had completely forgotten that we needed somebody to steer.

    I leap on board: no helmsman steers: I float till all is dark.

  3. 3

    To be directed and governed; to take a direction, or course; to obey the helm.

    The boat steers easily.

    Where the wind / Veers oft, as oft [a ship] so steers, and shifts her sail.

  4. 4

    To direct a group of animals.

  5. 5

    To maneuver or manipulate a person or group into a place or course of action.

    Hume believes that principles of association steer the imagination of artists.

  6. 6

    To conduct oneself; to take or pursue a course of action.

  7. 7

    To direct a conversation.

  8. 8

    To direct or send an object into a specific place

    Sterling, who scored the winners against Croatia and the Czech Republic in the group stage, steered in Luke Shaw's cross after 75 minutes to send England's fans, with more than 40,000 inside Wembley, into wild celebrations.

Etymology

Inherited from Middle English steeren, steren, stiren, sturen, steoren, from Old English stēoran, stīeran, stȳran (“to steer; guide a vessel”), from Proto-West Germanic *stiurijan (“to steer”), from Proto-Germanic *stiurijaną (“to steer”). The noun is from Middle English steere, stere (“rudder”), steor, from Old English stēor, stȳr (“steering; guidance; direction”). Compare Dutch stuur, German Steuer, Icelandic stýri.

noun

  1. 1

    informalA suggestion about a course of action.

    I tried to give you the steer, but I guess I didn't get it over. Everybody knew it but you.

  2. 2

    obsoleteA helmsman; a pilot.

noun

  1. 1

    The castrated male of cattle, especially one raised for beef production.

    He counted the cattle over and over. It diverted him to speculate as to how much weight each of the steers would probably put on by spring.

Etymology

Inherited from Middle English steer, ster, from Old English stēor (“a young bull or cow; steer”), from Proto-Germanic *steuraz (“bull; steer”), from Proto-Indo-European *(s)táwros (“wild bull; aurochs”). Cognate with Dutch stier, German Stier, Icelandic stjór, Latin taurus (“bull”), Greek ταύρος (távros). Doublet of tur and Taurus.

verb

  1. 1

    To castrate (a male calf).

Forms

plural
steers
past tense
steered
past participle
steered
present participle
steering
third person singular
steers
The neighbouring pagesAlphabetical order follows the rules of the language, not byte values: an accent decides only between two otherwise identical words, and Spanish files Ñ as a letter of its own.

Lexical content from Wiktionary, under CC BY-SA 4.0 · Source entry · Data version 2026-08-23

Rank among the words of the OpenSubtitles 2018 corpus — film and television subtitles, so spoken rather than written usage (CC BY-SA 3.0).