Definition of "rudder" []

• A vertically hinged plate of metal, fiberglass, or wood mounted at the stern of a ship or boat for directing its course. (noun)
• A similar structure at the tail of an aircraft, used for effecting horizontal changes in course. (noun)
• A controlling agent or influence over direction; a guide. (noun)

American Heritage(R) Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright (c) 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

• "I know there's so much going on in the cockpit when you're trying to fly, and the rudders at your feet, the right and left rudder, is it possible that this could have been what we call a rudder roll?"
• "'The time seems coming when he who sees no world but that of courts and camps, and writes only how soldiers were drilled and shot, and how this ministerial conjurer out-conjured that other, and then guided, or at least held, something which he called the rudder of Government, but which was rather the spigot of Taxation, wherewith in place of steering he could tax, will pass for a more or less instructive"
• "Xisithrus says: he would not know a rudder from a prop"