steerage

Example Sentences

Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.

We tried to fly standby on an earlier departure, but another couple jumped us on the list at the last moment, and a gate agent said it was probably because we had booked into steerage.

From Slate • Oct. 9, 2025

Yet he was adventurous: one summer, work as a cattle feeder on a cattle steamer to England; one fall, steerage passage to Panama, in search of work there.

From New York Times • Dec. 31, 2021

Without a speedy fix to regain steerage, the Polar Star would face a nightmare scenario: getting stuck in ice as the ocean froze around it.

From Los Angeles Times • Aug. 2, 2019

My father worked his way up from nothing, pulling himself up by bootstraps he knitted himself from rat fur in steerage.

From Washington Post • Jun. 19, 2019

On the eighth day at sea, Lefty Stephanides, grandly, on one knee, in full view of six hundred and sixty-three steerage passengers, proposed to Desdemona Aristos while she sat on a docking cleat.

From "Middlesex: A Novel" by Jeffrey Eugenides