windlassing

Verb

windlass (third-person singular simple present windlasses, present participle windlassing, simple past and past participle windlassed)

1. To raise with, or as if with, a windlass; to use a windlass.
   • A favoring breeze enabled us to sail all the way down the lake, and (having been windlassed across the haul-over) even down the canals.1882, Constance Gordon-Cumming, “Ningpo and the Buddhist Temples”, in The Century Magazine
2. To take a roundabout course; to work warily or by indirect means.
   • He could not expect to allure him forward, and therefore drives him as far back as he can; that so he may be the more sure of him at the rebound; as a skilful woodsman, that by windlassing presently gets a shoot, which, without taking a compass and thereby a commodious stand, he could never have...a. 1660, Henry Hammond, a sermon

See all 5 meanings of windlass