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Nautical, Aeronautics. at right angles to the fore-and-aft line:
The vessel was sailing with the wind directly abeam.
directly abreast the middle of a ship’s side.
Historical Examples

We will suppose that you have luffed around the first mark, and the next leg is a run with the wind aft of abeam.
Harper’s Round Table, September 3, 1895 Various

She was abeam now, a mile away; how slow they were in running up an answer!
The Relief of Mafeking Filson Young

abeam—At right angles to the length of the vessel, as a dock is abeam when it bears directly off one side.
On Yacht Sailing Thomas Fleming Day

Before all the canvas could be reduced the hurricane struck her abeam.
Roger Willoughby William H. G. Kingston

The full force of the torrent struck her abeam, and away she swept down-stream like a thing possessed.
With the World’s Great Travellers, Volume 1 Various

When he first heard the pursuer’s boat, it was just abeam of the Isabel.
Watch and Wait Oliver Optic

The abeam arm fork is a curved timber scarphed, tabled, and bolted for additional security where the openings are large.
The Sailor’s Word-Book William Henry Smyth

The ominous thing was, they did not, as they might have expected, see her on the quarter but abeam.
Kit Musgrave’s Luck Harold Bindloss

Still, the sea struck her abeam, forcing her bodily to leeward, and heaving the lower yardarms into the ocean.
Homeward Bound James Fenimore Cooper

This would bring the combers upon her quarter, or, worse still, abeam.
The Protector Harold Bindloss

adverb, adjective
(postpositive) at right angles to the length and directly opposite the centre of a vessel or aircraft
adv.

“at right angles to the keel,” c.1836, nautical, literally “on beam;” see a- (1) + beam (n.).