catamaran

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition

1. n. A boat with two parallel hulls or floats, especially a light sailboat with a mast mounted on a transverse frame joining the hulls.
2. n. A raft of logs or floats lashed together and propelled by paddles or sails.

Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia

1. n. A kind of float or raft used by various peoples. It consists usually of several pieces of wood lashed together, the middle piece or pieces being longer than the others, and having one end turned up in the form of a bow. It is used on the coasts of Coromandel, and particularly at Madras, for conveying letters, messages, etc., through the surf to the shipping in the roads. Catamarans are also used in short navigations along the sea-shore in the West Indies, and on the coast of South America very large ones are employed. The name was also applied to the flat-bottomed fire-boats built by the English in 1804, and despatched, without success, against the French flotilla collected in Boulogne and neighboring harbors for the invasion of England.
2. n. Any craft with twin hulls, the inner faces of which are parallel to each other from stem to stern, and which is propelled either by sail or by steam. Sometimes shortened to cat.
3. n. A quarrelsome woman; a vixen; a scold: a humorous or arbitrary use, with allusion to cat or catamount. See cat, 4.
4. n. In lumbering, a small raft carrying a windlass and grapple, used to recover sunken logs.

Wiktionary

1. n. A raft consisting of two or more logs tied together.
2. n. A raft used on the St Lawrence River by lashing two ships together.
3. n. A small rectangular raft used in dockyards to protect the hulls of large ships.
4. n. A twin-hulled sailing yacht, especially one used for racing; the hulls being connected by a deck carrying the mast, rigging, cockpit and cabin.

GNU Webster's 1913

1. n. A kind of raft or float, consisting of two or more logs or pieces of wood lashed together, and moved by paddles or sail; -- used as a surf boat and for other purposes on the coasts of the East and West Indies and South America. Modified forms are much used in the lumber regions of North America, and at life-saving stations.
2. n. Any vessel with twin hulls, whether propelled by sails or by steam; esp., one of a class of double-hulled pleasure boats remarkable for speed.
3. n. A kind of fire raft or torpedo bat.
4. n. A quarrelsome woman; a scold.

WordNet 3.0

1. n. a sailboat with two parallel hulls held together by single deck