mainmast head
mainmast head noun: the top of a sailing ship’s mainmast.
Noun
mainmast head (plural mainmast heads)
- The top of a sailing ship’s mainmast.
- What early philosophic hours he keeps,
How regular his meals, how sound he sleeps!
Not sounder he that on the mainmast head,
While morning kindles with a windy red,
Begins a long look-out for distant land,
Nor quits till evening-watch his giddy stand,
Then swift descending with a seaman’s...1782, William Cowper, “Retirement”, in Poems, London: J. Johnson, page 280 - Fedallah first descried this jet. For of these moonlight nights, it was his wont to mount to the main-mast head, and stand a look-out there, with the same precision as if it had been day.1851 November 14, Herman Melville, “Chapter 51”, in Moby-Dick; or, The Whale, 1st American edition, New York, N.Y.: Harper & Brothers; London: Richard Bentley, →OCLC
- What early philosophic hours he keeps,
Forms of mainmast head
| plural | mainmast heads |
|---|
Questions about mainmast head
- What does mainmast head mean?
- Mainmast head means the top of a sailing ship’s mainmast.
- What part of speech is mainmast head?
- Mainmast head is a noun.
- What is the plural of mainmast head?
- The plural of mainmast head is mainmast heads.
Words near mainmast head in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: mainmast head (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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