Definitions
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- n. In ship-building, a beam of wood formerly bolted to the side of a ship abaft the fore-chains, to which the main-tack was hauled down.
Wiktionary
- n. nautical Either of two pieces of oak fitted to the topsides of a square-rigged vessel on each side of the bow through which the bowlines were fed; often decoratively carved
GNU Webster's 1913
- n. (Naut.) A piece of oak bolted perpendicularly on the side of a vessel, to aid in drawing down and securing the clew of the mainsail.
Examples
“A few strokes of the axes were heard, and then the cable flew out of the hawse-hole in a blaze of fire, from the violence of the friction, and disappeared under a huge wave, which struck us on the chesstree, and deluged us with water fore and aft.”
“On came the watery mountain with its curling crest of snowy foam, and, striking the ship with terrific force and with a noise like thunder, broke over the starboard chesstree, deluging the decks forward and carrying away a fine cutter off the larboard skidds, with some of the rails and carlings of the head.”
“But the mountainous waves took her with irresistible force from her chesstree, retarding her velocity, and forcing her each moment nearer to the reef.”
“She was what sailors term rather _a wet one_, and as she plunged through the short waves the sea broke continually over her bows and chesstree, so that there was no occasion to draw water for purification.”
“a sea broke over her chesstree, which nearly drowned us where we were clinging.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘chesstree’.
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Some Ship-building Terms
Ship builders' terms, from stem to stern (these words aren't on the list).
coping, chock, filling, sponson, spale, shore, deck-beam, beam, round-up, shelf, ribband, sny and 248 more...
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Wordie/Wordnik Curio Cabinet
Oddments culled from my "main" lists that belong in a display cabinet of their own, plus sundry other curiosities. :-)
zeugma, ziggurat, xiphoid, xeric, whizgigging, whangdoodle, viviparous, vivific, vinolent, verjuice, vellicate, velleity and 1193 more...
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Monovocalics
Words that have only one of the vowels. On this list I include only words with at least three vowels. When I first started the list, if a word had several forms, I generally listed only the one wit...
syzygy, mirific, cumulus, homolog, monocot, bedewed, jezebel, referee, bikini, minikin, locomotor, terebenthene and 2359 more...
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...a list from a notebook...
I found several pages of words in an old notebook. By the looks of it, they were words I learnt some time ago (and subsequently wrote down) from books by Patrick O'Brian and China Mieville, two aut...
trabacaloes, jocosity, ordnance, transom, douceur, purser, nostrum, gaby, sea-lawyer, bowsprit, officious, hobnailed and 124 more...
Tweets
Looking for tweets for chesstree.
reesetee A piece of oak bolted perpendicularly on the side of a vessel, to aid in drawing down and securing the clew of the mainsail. Nov 9, 2007