Word.ws English Dictionary

sprit-sail

sprit-sail is the alternative form of spritsail.

Meaning of spritsail

Noun

spritsail (plural spritsails)

  1. A form of three- or four-sided fore-and-aft sail and its rig, supporting the leech of the sail by means of a sprit.
    • Finding it was like to overblow, we took in our Sprit-ſail, and ſtood by to hand the Fore-ſail; but making foul Weather, we look'd the Guns were all faſt, and handed the Miſſen.1726 October 28, [Jonathan Swift], “A Great Storm Described, the Long-Boat Sent to Fetch Water, the Author Goes with It to Discover the Country. […]”, in Travels into Several Remote Nations of the...

Forms of sprit-sail

pluralsprit-sails

Questions about sprit-sail

What is sprit-sail the alternative form of?
Sprit-sail is the alternative form of spritsail.

Words near sprit-sail in the dictionary

  1. sprintings
  2. sprints
  3. sprints classification
  4. sprints classifications
  5. sprit
  6. sprit-sail
  7. sprit-sails
  8. sprite
  9. sprite comic
  10. sprite halo
  11. sprite haloes

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: sprit-sail (page history and authors); spritsail (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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Cite this entry: “sprit-sail.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/sprit-sail. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.