Word.ws English Dictionary

chopboat

chopboat noun: a licensed lighter (watercraft) employed in the transportation of goods to and from larger vessels.

chopboat: a licensed lighter (watercraft) employed in the transportation of goods to and from larger vessels
Image: Daderot, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Noun

chopboat (plural chopboats)

  1. (historical) A licensed lighter (watercraft) employed in the transportation of goods to and from larger vessels.
    • In taking in cargo, the receiving officer should not be interrupted, for he has need of all his carefulness to see that the coolies in the chopboat do not slily pass up a chest with two tallies stuck in it, or slip a package off sideways from the board1856, Samuel Wells Williams, A Chinese Commercial Guide

Forms of chopboat

pluralchopboats

Origin of chopboat

From chop (“stamp, mark of quality, license”) + boat.

Questions about chopboat

What does chopboat mean?
Chopboat means a licensed lighter (watercraft) employed in the transportation of goods to and from larger vessels.
What part of speech is chopboat?
Chopboat is a noun.
What is the plural of chopboat?
The plural of chopboat is chopboats.

Words near chopboat in the dictionary

  1. chop-shop
  2. chop-shopped
  3. chop-shopping
  4. chop-shops
  5. Chopawamsic
  6. chopboat
  7. chopboats
  8. chopcherry
  9. chopchurch
  10. chopchurches
  11. chopdar

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: chopboat (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.

Last updated:

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