careen

Etymology

Late 16th century, from French carene (“keel”), from Genoese Ligurian carena, from Latin carīna (“keel of a ship”). Doublet of carene and carina.

verb

1. (nautical, transitive) To heave a ship down on one side so as to expose the other, in order to clean it of barnacles and weed, or to repair it below the water line.
2. (nautical, intransitive) To tilt on one side.
3. To lurch or sway violently from side to side.
   They were not motionless, but swayed to and fro above her head, thronging out of one sky-light into another, as if the universe and not the air-ship was careening. 1909, E. M. Forster, “Chapter I”, in The Machine Stops
4. To tilt or lean while in motion.
5. (chiefly US) To career, to move rapidly straight ahead, to rush carelessly.
6. (chiefly US) To move swiftly and in an uncontrolled way.
   The car in which I had taken Olivia to dinner and then out to the cemetery — a historic vehicle, even a monument of sorts, in the history of fellatio's advent onto the Winesburg campus in the second half of the twentieth century — went careening off to the side and turned end-over-end down Lower Main until it exploded in flames... 2008, Philip Roth, Indignation
   He tries for a lot of things, careening wildly from earnest romance to feel-good comedy to hackneyed suspense, all the while leaving it up to the audience to suss out the moral complexity and existential terror underneath the glossy surface. 2016-12-20, Katie Rife, “Passengers strains the considerable charms of Chris Pratt and Jennifer Lawrence”, in The Onion AV Club

noun

1. (nautical) The position of a ship laid on one side.