clewline
clewline noun: outermost of the ropes with which a square sail is rolled up to the yard.
Noun
clewline (plural clewlines)
- Outermost of the ropes with which a square sail is rolled up to the yard
- If the halyards are not single, the yard must be sent down by a yard rope, like the topgallant yard. In some vessels, instead of making the sheets and clewlines fast to the jack, over-hand knots are taken in their ends, and they are let go.1863, Richard Henry Dana Jr, Captain Brown, Dana's Seaman's friend, page 24
- The only sail that is wholly ours is the spanker. They control absolutely--sheets, halyards, clewlines, buntlines, braces, and down-hauls--every sail on the fore and main. We control the braces on the mizzen, although they control the canvas on the mizzen.1914, Jack London, The Mutiny of the Elsinore, Chapter XLVI
Forms of clewline
| plural | clewlines |
|---|
Origin of clewline
From clew + line.
Questions about clewline
- What does clewline mean?
- Clewline means outermost of the ropes with which a square sail is rolled up to the yard.
- What part of speech is clewline?
- Clewline is a noun.
- What is the plural of clewline?
- The plural of clewline is clewlines.
Words near clewline in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: clewline (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: “clewline.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/clewline. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.