tack

noun

1. 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 Tour's overall leader, and his chief rivals.

2. 2

   A thumbtack.

3. 3

   A loose seam used to temporarily fasten pieces of cloth.

4. 4

   The lower corner on the leading edge of a sail relative to the direction of the wind.

5. 5

   A course or heading that enables a sailing vessel to head upwind.

6. 6

   figurativeA 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;

   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.

   ‘I know it all right,’ Big Bil snarled, ‘but knowing and proving are two different tacks.’

   I thought that my refusing Barnard would alienate Botha, and decided that such a tack was too risky.

7. 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.

8. 8

   The distance a sailing vessel runs between these maneuvers when working to windward; a board.

9. 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. 10

    Any of the various equipment and accessories worn by horses in the course of their use as domesticated animals.

11. 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, […]

12. 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!

13. 13

    That which is attached; a supplement; an appendix.

    Some tacks had been made to money bills in King Charles's time.

    pay all taxes and subscribe tacks

14. 14

    obsoleteConfidence; reliance.

    He should find[…]that there was tack in it, that it was solid silver, or silver that had strength in it.

verb

1. 1

   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.

2. 2

   To sew/stitch with a tack (loose seam used to temporarily fasten pieces of cloth).

3. 3

   To weld with initial small welds to temporarily fasten in preparation for full welding.

4. 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.

5. 5

   To sail to windward using a series of alternate tacks across the wind.

6. 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.

7. 7

   Synonym of tack up (“to prepare a horse for riding by equipping it with a tack”).

8. 8

   obsoleteTo join in wedlock.

noun

1. 1

   A stain; a tache.

2. 2

   obsoleteA peculiar flavour or taint.

   a musty tack

noun

1. 1

   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.

noun

1. 1

   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.

Forms

plural

tacks

past tense

tacked

past participle

tacked

present participle

tacking

third person singular

tacks