speronara
speronara noun: a small, usually single-masted, sailing boat, used especially for transport between Sicily and Malta, remaining in use along the coast of Sicily until the mid-20th century.
Noun
speronara (plural speronaras)
- A small, usually single-masted, sailing boat, used especially for transport between Sicily and Malta, remaining in use along the coast of Sicily until the mid-20th century.
- 'Whilst my boat was preparing (a Maltese speronara, with a crew of twelve men, selected for their knowledge of the coast,) I wrote two letters, one to Malta, and the other to Lisbon, stating the loss of the ship.1850, William O. S. Gilly, Narratives of Shipwrecks of the Royal Navy; between 1793 and 1849
- We had the ponente, or west-wind, all night, but the speronara moved sluggishly, and in the morning it changed to the greco-levante, or north-east.1854 (date written), Bayard Taylor, “The Festival of St. Agatha”, in The Lands of the Saracen; or, Pictures of Palestine, Asia Minor, Sicily, and Spain, New York, N.Y.: G[eorge] P[almer] Putnam &...
Forms of speronara
| plural | speronaras |
|---|
Origin of speronara
From Italian speronara, Sicilian spirunara.
Questions about speronara
- What does speronara mean?
- Speronara means a small, usually single-masted, sailing boat, used especially for transport between Sicily and Malta, remaining in use along the coast of Sicily until the mid-20th century.
- What part of speech is speronara?
- Speronara is a noun.
- What is the plural of speronara?
- The plural of speronara is speronaras.
Words near speronara in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: speronara (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: “speronara.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/speronara. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.