gaff topsail
noun
a jib-headed fore-and-aft sail set above a gaff.
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gaff topsail
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gaff-topsail
gaff-topsailnouna sail set above a gaffsail
gaff topsail
American
[gaf top-seyl, top-suhl]
/ ˈgæf ˈtɒpˌseɪl, ˈtɒpˌsəl /
noun
Nautical.
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Also called fore-and-aft topsail. a jib-headed fore-and-aft sail set above a gaff.
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a quadrilateral fore-and-aft sail set above the spanker of a bark, between the gaff of the spanker and an upper gaff.
gaff-topsail
British
noun
Etymology
Origin of gaff topsail
First recorded in 1785–95
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.
See Examples For:
It was a fine, clear, frosty morning, and the Badger quickly sent up his gaff topsail and began to overhaul the other, so that by nine o'clock the two vessels were only a mile apart.
From King's Cutters and Smugglers 1700-1855 by E. Keble (Edward Keble) Chatterton
Used aboard yachts for bending on the gaff topsail halliards.
From Boy Scouts Handbook The First Edition, 1911 by Boy Scouts of America
"Maybe," continued the mate, "she will soon have too much breeze; that gaff topsail is foolish in a boat with no deck and no sailor on board."
From Florence and Northern Tuscany with Genoa With Sixteen Illustrations In Colour By William Parkinson And Sixteen Other Illustrations, Second Edition by Edward Hutton
The moment the boat left the side Brabant set the gaff topsail and square-sail, and headed the Loelia towards the north end of the island.
From The Trader's Wife 1901 by Louis Becke
Papa, on this, ordered the gaff topsail to be taken in, and the jib shifted.
From A Yacht Voyage Round England by William Henry Giles Kingston
There and then, with a bight of the gaff-topsail halliards, he gave me such a dressing down as I have never forgotten, You Sing standing by with a face like a door-knocker for expressionless calm.
From The Log of a Sea-Waif Being Recollections of the First Four Years of My Sea Life by Frank T. Bullen
She carries a fore-and-aft main-sail, gaff-topsail, stay-foresail, and jib.
From The Sailor's Word-Book An Alphabetical Digest of Nautical Terms, including Some More Especially Military and Scientific, but Useful to Seamen; as well as Archaisms of Early Voyagers, etc. by Sir Edward Belcher
The wind was so light that both the jib and gaff-topsail were set, and the boat which, at a distance, would have looked like a little cutter, stood well up to her canvas.
From The Three Admirals by J.R. Wells
And raising me in his arms he laid me on the folds of the gaff-topsail, which lay upon the deck near the tiller.
From The Coral Island by R. M. (Robert Michael) Ballantyne
“Well, ’twas just as I’d caught a glimpse, as I thought, of the peak of the Lily’s gaff-topsail, that I sees, about fifty fathom away, the fin of that — shark scullin’ quietly along.
From The Secret of the Sands The "Water Lily" and her Crew by Harry Collingwood
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.
