Word.ws English Dictionary

crow's nests

crow's nests is the plural of crow's nest.

Meaning of crow's nest

Noun

crow's nest (plural crow's nests)

  1. A small open-top shelter, originally a cask, on the top of the foremast, large enough to accommodate a lookout. It was used by whalers to watch for a blow (spout), or in icebound waters to seek a channel.
    • When Captain Sleet in person stood his mast-head in this crow’s-nest of his, he tells us that he always had a rifle with him (also fixed in the rack), together with a powder flask and shot, for the purpose of popping off the stray narwhales, or vagrant sea unicorns infesting those waters; […].1851 November 14, Herman Melville, chapter 35, in Moby-Dick; or, The Whale, 1st American edition, New York, N.Y.: Harper & Brothers; London: Richard Bentley, →OCLC

Questions about crow's nests

What is crow's nests the plural of?
Crow's nests is the plural of crow's nest.

Words near crow's nests in the dictionary

  1. crow's bill
  2. crow's bills
  3. crow's feet
  4. crow's foot
  5. crow's nest
  6. crow's nests
  7. crow's-feet
  8. crow's-foot
  9. crow's-nest
  10. crow's-nests
  11. crow-bill

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: crow's nests (page history and authors); crow's nest (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: “crow's nests.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/crow%27s_nests. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.