Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- n. Nautical A rope or chain used to steady the bowsprit of a ship.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- n. Nautical, one of two or three ropes or chains extending from the outer end of the bowsprit to the cut-water. Their function is to hold the bowsprit down in its place, and counteract the upward strain exerted by the headstays.
Wiktionary
- n. nautical A strong rope or chain rigging running from the end of the bowsprit to the ship's stem or cutwater
GNU Webster's 1913
- n. (Naut.) A rope or chain to confine the bowsprit of a ship downward to the stem or cutwater; -- usually in the pl.
Examples
“The Kanaka caught the bobstay, climbed over the bow, and crawled aft.”
“I heard the wind sighing in the rigging of my boat, I heard the halyards napping on the mast, and I wondered if the mooring chains were chafing at the bobstay in the running tide.”
“Our bobstay snapped like sealing-wax, our mainsail rent like ribbon, our foresail flew away, and she would not answer her helm, and we remained in the trough of the waves, which rose awfully high.”
“The little craft was tossing in the heavy swell, and before she had been in the pack for ten minutes she came down on a cake of ice and broke the bobstay.”
“When we had wind, we used it to the utmost; but we did not do this without the loss of one or two things; the new jib-sheet broke a couple of times, and one night we carried away the outer bobstay of the jib-boom.”
The South Pole; an account of the Norwegian antarctic expedition in the 'Fram', 1910 to 1912
“On the forward side of the stem a segment-shaped iron was bolted from the bobstay-bolt to some way under the keel.”
The South Pole; an account of the Norwegian antarctic expedition in the 'Fram', 1910 to 1912
“A filthy hole I call it; we had to stop a couple of days, as we fouled a buoy coming in and carried away the bobstay; we lay in a dirty little tidal dock, and there was nothing to do on shore. ”
“He had doubled round the bows of the yacht, and I did the same, ducked under the bowsprit, forgetting the bobstay, and fell violently on my head, with all the wind knocked out of me by a wire rope and block whose strength and bulk was one of the glories of the Dulcibella.”
“After this, climbing up the bobstay, he regained the deck, and proceeded to dry his hairy frame on an ancient flannel shirt.”
Golden Stories A Selection of the Best Fiction by the Foremost Writers
“Sea, the lookout forward called the attention of the officer of the watch to the fact that a huge shark was jammed in between the bobstay-shackle and the stem.”
Golden Days for Boys and Girls Volume XIII, No. 51: November 12, 1892
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘bobstay’.
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phrontistery - b
List of words from phrontistery.info
blandish, blazon, blench, blendling, blendure, blewit, blunge, blype, borné, borsella, borzoi, boscage and 582 more...
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Bob
He's everywhere.
bob, Bob, bobolink, nabob, bobbing, apple bobbing, Bob Dylan, ragtag and bobtail, plumb bob, kabob, discombobulate, earbob and 106 more...
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Logolepsy
"Luciferous Logolepsy is a collection of over 9,000 obscure English words. Though the definition of an 'English' word might seem to be straightforward, it is not. There exist so many adopted, deriv...
Anschauung, Areopagus, Argus, Briarean, Dei gratia, Dei judicium, Deo volente, Duecento, Foehn, Geflugelte Worte, Gegenschein, Hakenkreuz and 9230 more...
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