: to shift suddenly and forcibly from one side to the other—used of a fore-and-aft sail or its boom
was the most amazed when he saw me work the boat to and again in the sea by the rudder, and how the sail jibed, and filled this way or that way as the course we sailed changed Daniel Defoethe cutter had lost all four foremost men by the violent jibing of a boom Herman Melville
2
: to change a vessel's course when sailing with the wind so that as the stern passes through the eye of the wind the boom swings to the opposite side
this maneuver was bound to force her to jibe her mainsail from one side to the other Jack London
jibenoun
or less commonly gybe
Did you know?
Jive vs. Jibe
People began confusing jive and jibe almost immediately after jive entered our language in the late 1920s. In particular, jive is often used as a variant for the sense of jibe meaning “agree,” as in “that doesn’t jive with my memory of what happened.” This use of jive, although increasingly common, is widely considered to be an error. Jibe, however, is accepted as a variant spelling of an entirely different word, which is gibe (“to utter taunting words”).
This doesn’t jibe with Cynthia Kirsch’s memory of how things unfolded.cincinnati.com, 22 Aug. 2022 For example, a wicker trash can may look out of place in a sleek and modern bathroom, just as a black rectangular stainless steel bin won't jibe well with farmhouse style or cottagecore. Kathleen Willcox, Popular Mechanics, 21 July 2022 The images also jibe nicely with the photos of long-haired hipster WPKN staffers in the 1960s. Christopher Arnott, Hartford Courant, 22 June 2022 That did not jibe with any theoretical models, all of which said the heliosphere should expand and contract in sync with the sun's 11-year cycle. Tim Folger, Scientific American, 18 June 2022 But these ambitious promises don’t necessarily jibe with the fact that most homeless people do not want to live in group shelters, according to Rand Corp. research published last week. Benjamin Oreskesstaff Writer, Los Angeles Times, 8 May 2022 However, that account does not jibe with the confession Peck reportedly made to the police at the time of his arrest. Clifford Ward, chicagotribune.com, 27 Jan. 2022 Sometimes games are Saturdays morning and Sunday afternoons, which jibe with his schedule. Marc Bona, cleveland, 24 Jan. 2022 But that desire for normalcy doesn’t jibe with the unpredictability of a virus. Rex Huppke, chicagotribune.com, 7 Jan. 2022 See More