Word.ws English Dictionary

downhaul

downhaul noun: any rope used to haul down a sail or spar.

Noun

downhaul (plural downhauls)

  1. Any rope used to haul down a sail or spar.
    • 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 downhaul

pluraldownhauls

Origin of downhaul

From down- + haul.

Words formed from downhaul

Questions about downhaul

What does downhaul mean?
Downhaul means any rope used to haul down a sail or spar.
What part of speech is downhaul?
Downhaul is a noun.
What is the plural of downhaul?
The plural of downhaul is downhauls.

Words near downhaul in the dictionary

  1. downgrowths
  2. downgyved
  3. Downham
  4. Downham Market
  5. downhanging
  6. downhaul
  7. downhauls
  8. downhearted
  9. downheartedly
  10. downheartedness
  11. downhill

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: downhaul (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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