Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun A warrant officer or petty officer in charge of a ship's rigging, anchors, cables, and deck crew.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun A subordinate officer of a ship, who has charge of the rigging, anchors, cables, and cordage.
  • noun A jäger or skua; any bird of the genus Lestris or Stercorarius.
  • noun A name of birds of the genus Phaëthon. See tropic-bird.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun (Naut.) An officer who has charge of the boats, sails, rigging, colors, anchors, cables, cordage, etc., of a ship, and who also summons the crew, and performs other duties.
  • noun The jager gull.
  • noun The tropic bird.
  • noun an assistant of the boatswain.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun nautical The officer (or warrant officer) in charge of sails, rigging, anchors, cables etc. and all work on deck of a sailing ship.
  • noun nautical The petty officer of a merchant ship who controls the work of other seamen.
  • noun A kind of gull, the jaeger.
  • noun The tropicbird.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun a petty officer on a merchant ship who controls the work of other seamen

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Middle English botswein : bot, boat; see boat + swein, mate; see swain.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

boat +‎ swain (“boy, servant”)

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Examples

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  • It's a bird.

    January 10, 2012