Stear

Part of speech: verb, noun

Definitions

1. To guide or direct the course of a vessel or vehicle
2. To control the direction or path of something in motion
3. To navigate or manage the heading of a craft through water or air

Etymology: "Stear" is an obsolete spelling of "steer," and the word's history splits into two unrelated lines that happen to share a spelling. The verb to steer, meaning to guide a vessel, comes from Old English "stēoran" and "stīeran," rooted in a Proto-Germanic word for guiding or directing. The noun for the rudder, along with the sense of steering or guidance, follows the same path. Dutch "stuur" and German "Steuer" are close cousins of these forms. The other "steer," meaning a young bull or ox, comes from a completely separate root. Old English "stēor" meant a young bull or cow, and it traces back to a Proto-Indo-European word for wild bull, the same ancestor as Latin "taurus" and Greek "tauros." That makes the bovine "steer" a distant relative of the Taurus constellation and the English word "tur," a doublet that came into English by a different route.