Word.ws English Dictionary

boatswen

boatswen is the obsolete spelling of boatswain.

Meaning of boatswain

Noun

boatswain (plural boatswains)

  1. The officer (or warrant officer) in charge of sails, rigging, anchors, cables etc. and all work on deck of a sailing ship.
  2. The petty officer of a merchant ship who controls the work of other seamen.
  3. A kind of gull, the jaeger.
  4. The tropicbird.

Forms of boatswen

pluralboatswens

Origin of boatswen

From boat + swen.

Questions about boatswen

What is boatswen the obsolete spelling of?
Boatswen is the obsolete spelling of boatswain.

Words near boatswen in the dictionary

  1. boatswain's pipes
  2. boatswain-bird
  3. boatswain-birds
  4. Boatswainbird Island
  5. boatswains
  6. boatswen
  7. boatswoman
  8. boatswomen
  9. boattail
  10. boattailed
  11. boattails

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: boatswen (page history and authors); boatswain (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: “boatswen.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/boatswen. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.