Word.ws English Dictionary

cordage

/ˈkɔːdɪdʒ/

cordage noun: cord (of any type) when viewed as a mass or commodity.

Noun

cordage (countable and uncountable, plural cordages)

  1. (uncountable) Cord (of any type) when viewed as a mass or commodity.
  2. A set of ropes and cords, especially that used for a ship's rigging.
    • So Juan stood, bewildered on the deck: / The wind sung, cordage strained, and sailors swore […]1819 July 15, [Lord Byron], Don Juan, London: […] Thomas Davison, […], →OCLC, canto II, stanza 13
    • […] as the old craft deep dived into the green seas, and sent the shivering frost all over her, and the winds howled, and the cordage rang […]1851 November 14, Herman Melville, “chapter 22”, in Moby-Dick; or, The Whale, 1st American edition, New York, N.Y.: Harper & Brothers; London: Richard Bentley, →OCLC
  3. (obsolete) An amount of wood measured in cords.

Forms of cordage

pluralcordages

Origin of cordage

Borrowed from French cordage.

Questions about cordage

What does cordage mean?
Cordage means cord (of any type) when viewed as a mass or commodity.
What part of speech is cordage?
Cordage is a noun.
How do you pronounce cordage?
Cordage is pronounced /ˈkɔːdɪdʒ/ (UK).
What is the plural of cordage?
The plural of cordage is cordages.

Words near cordage in the dictionary

  1. cord sets
  2. cord-cutter
  3. cord-cutters
  4. cord-cutting
  5. cord-lacing
  6. cordage
  7. cordages
  8. cordaitalean
  9. cordaitaleans
  10. cordaite
  11. cordaitean

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: cordage (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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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-cordage.wav.

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