to set sail - Glite Dictionary

Examples

His only practical choice would be to set sail as quickly as possible.

Fiction book (1995)
But life was hard there, so we set sail for the New World.

Fiction book (2000)
It's time to set sail!

RE-Artists (2019)
Ooh, the love boat is about to set sail.

Monsters, Inc. (2001)
We're setting sail for Korea.

Devotion (2022)
Today I set sail upon the seven seas with my hundreds of men!

Jolly Roger: Massacre at Cutter's Cove (2005)
The first American ships set sail in the 1820s.

Academic text (2010)
Unable to escape political harassment, Lieber set sail for London and then on to America.

Academic text (2008)
On April 23, we set sail from Kobe, Japan, for Seattle.

Academic text (1990)
We're ready to set sail for our summer vacation in the Bahamas.

Synonyms

to embark

vsto set sail

18 4.4

To get on a ship, plane, or other vehicle to begin a journey

focuses on beginning a boat voyage by getting the vessel moving

to make sail

vsto set sail

Archaic

1 8.1

To start a journey by boat

has identical meaning but uses a different phrase form

Antonyms

to stay put

Informal

133 2.0

Remain in the same place without moving

How Ready

to set sail

25 2.9

to weigh anchor

Specialized

3 7.7

pretravel

4.4

Surface Forms

set sail infinitive

set sail past

set sail past participle

setting sail present participle

sets sail third person singular

Morphology

set + sail

The meaning 'to begin a journey by boat' follows directly from combining 'set' (to initiate) with 'sail' (to travel by ship), so a B1 learner who knows both words can readily infer the phrase. This is a common, literal compositional pattern found in many languages, so the expression is transparently interpretable.

Etymology

Set sail comes from sailors putting up a ship's sails so the wind could move the boat. To set the sails meant the voyage was starting, so today it means 'to begin a journey by boat'.