matelot
Americannoun
noun
Etymology
Origin of matelot
1910–15; < French ≪ Middle Dutch mattenoot sailor, equivalent to matte mat 1 + noot companion ( Dutch genoot )
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.
They were the only places you’d get French imported stuff from – the hipster trousers and matelot shirts – which we liked.
From The Guardian ● May 17, 2015
On one occasion, one of them escaped into the plains, but returned three days after, very complacently heading a herd of hogs, of which his master and his matelot killed four.
From The Monarchs of the Main, Volume I (of 3) Or, Adventures of the Buccaneers by Walter Thornbury
Everywhere Professors in straw hats and Heads of Colleges en matelot.
From The Casual Ward academic and other oddments by A. D. (Alfred Denis) Godley
So in the old days a boucanier might acquire a matelot, to be his companion, and over the years the matelots got to be more like younger brothers than indentures.
From Caribbee by Thomas Hoover
He had been a matelot, he said,—made a long voyage, and once touched at an English port.
From Rambles in the Islands of Corsica and Sardinia with Notices of their History, Antiquities, and Present Condition. by Thomas Forester
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
