Word.ws English Dictionary

apeak

/əˈpiːk/

apeak adverb: in a vertical line, the cable having been sufficiently hove in to bring the ship over it.

Adverb

apeak (not comparable)

  1. In a vertical line, the cable having been sufficiently hove in to bring the ship over it.
    • Thus the good we should cherish, the bad never seek, / For death will too soon bring each anchor apeak.a 1796, Charles Dibdin, "Nautical Philosophy"
    • I found the New Shoreham with her anchor apeak and, within a quarter of an hour after I reached her, running seven knots an hour, right before the wind.1808–10, William Hickey, Memoirs of a Georgian Rake, Folio Society 1995, p. 163

Forms of apeak

alternative formapeek

Origin of apeak

From French à pic (“at its summit; vertically”), compare with Italian a picco.

Questions about apeak

What does apeak mean?
Apeak means in a vertical line, the cable having been sufficiently hove in to bring the ship over it.
What part of speech is apeak?
Apeak is an adverb.
How do you pronounce apeak?
Apeak is pronounced /əˈpiːk/.

Words near apeak in the dictionary

  1. ape-man
  2. ape-men
  3. ape-people
  4. ape-person
  5. ape-persons
  6. apeak
  7. APEC
  8. aped
  9. Apedale
  10. apedicellate
  11. apedom

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: apeak (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “apeak.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/apeak. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.