Word.ws English Dictionary

boltsprit

boltsprit is the alternative form of bowsprit.

Meaning of bowsprit

Noun

bowsprit (plural bowsprits)

  1. A spar projecting over the prow of a sailing vessel to provide the means of adding sail surface.
    • There lay the Ghost, bow on to the beach, her splintered bowsprit projecting over the sand, her tangled spars rubbing against her side to the lift of the crooning waves. Something must be done, must be done.1904, Jack London, chapter 32, in The Sea-Wolf (Macmillan’s Standard Library), New York, N.Y.: Grosset & Dunlap, →OCLC

Forms of boltsprit

pluralboltsprits

Origin of boltsprit

A corruption of bowsprit.

Questions about boltsprit

What is boltsprit the alternative form of?
Boltsprit is the alternative form of bowsprit.

Words near boltsprit in the dictionary

  1. bolts in
  2. bolts out of the blue
  3. bolts to the bran
  4. boltsmith
  5. boltsmiths
  6. boltsprit
  7. boltsprits
  8. Boltuck
  9. boltwoodite
  10. boltwork
  11. bolty

Source and license

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