Word.ws English Dictionary

main-truck

main-truck noun: on a wooden mast, a circular disc (or sometimes a rectangle) of wood near or at the top of the mast, usually with holes or sheaves to reeve signal halyards; also a temporary or emergency place for a lookout.

Noun

main-truck (plural main-trucks)

  1. On a wooden mast, a circular disc (or sometimes a rectangle) of wood near or at the top of the mast, usually with holes or sheaves to reeve signal halyards; also a temporary or emergency place for a lookout.
    • But oh! shipmates! on the starboard hand of every woe, there is a sure delight; and higher the top of that delight, than the bottom of the woe is deep. Is not the main-truck higher than the kelson is low?1851 November 14, Herman Melville, “chapter 9”, in Moby-Dick; or, The Whale, 1st American edition, New York, N.Y.: Harper & Brothers; London: Richard Bentley, →OCLC
    • I told him about everything I could think of; and what I couldn't think of he did. He asked about six questions during my yarn, but every question had a point to it. At the end he bowed and thanked me once more. As a thanker he was main-truck high; I never see anybody so polite.1913, Joseph C[rosby] Lincoln, chapter IV, in Mr. Pratt’s Patients, New York, N.Y.; London: D[aniel] Appleton and Company, →OCLC

Forms of main-truck

pluralmain-trucks

Origin of main-truck

"Main" refers to the mainmast, whereas a truck on another mast may be called (on the mizzenmast, for example) "mizzen-truck".

Questions about main-truck

What does main-truck mean?
Main-truck means on a wooden mast, a circular disc (or sometimes a rectangle) of wood near or at the top of the mast, usually with holes or sheaves to reeve signal halyards; also a temporary or emergency place for a lookout.
What part of speech is main-truck?
Main-truck is a noun.
What is the plural of main-truck?
The plural of main-truck is main-trucks.

Words near main-truck in the dictionary

  1. main-masts
  2. main-sequence star
  3. main-sequence stars
  4. main-topmast
  5. main-topmasts
  6. main-truck
  7. main-trucks
  8. Maina
  9. Mainah
  10. Mainahs
  11. Mainalos

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: main-truck (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: “main-truck.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/main-truck. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.