Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- n. A small rounded boat made of waterproof material stretched over a wicker or wooden frame.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- n. A fisherman's boat used in Wales and on many parts of the Irish coast, made by covering a wicker frame with leather or oil-cloth; a kind of bull-boat. Also spelled corracle.
Wiktionary
- n. nautical A small, circular or oblong boat made of wickerwork and made watertight with hides or pitch, propelled and steered with a single paddle and light enough to be carried on a man's back.
GNU Webster's 1913
- n. A boat made by covering a wicker frame with leather or oilcloth. It was used by the ancient Britons, and is still used by fisherman in Wales and some parts of Ireland. Also, a similar boat used in Tibet and in Egypt.
WordNet 3.0
- n. a small rounded boat made of hides stretched over a wicker frame; still used in some parts of Great Britain
Etymologies
- Welsh corwgl, from Middle Irish curach, from Old Irish. (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)
Examples
“Getting a body from river into a coracle is a tricky business, but he had practised it so long that he had it perfect, balance and heft and all, from his first grasp on the billowing sleeve to the moment when the little boat bobbed like a cork and spun like a drifting leaf, with the drowned man in-board and streaming water.”
“The umbrella consists of a large hood, much like the ancient boat called a coracle, which being placed over the head reaches to the thighs behind.”
“I am confused about 'corach' which the OED knows as an alternative spelling of 'currach' or 'coracle' - a small wicker boat used in ancient times in Scotland and Ireland - hardly the usage here.”
“The coracle is a circular basket boat, covered with buffalo hide or black plastic sheets.”
“I also happen to feel, or rather, I did, that "coracle" was an especially lovely old word.”
“Andrew MuellerOnce upon a time, there was an amazing Channel 4 show called Lost no, not that one, in which teams were dumped, blindfolded, in exotic places and obliged to make their way back to London by hook, crook or improvised coracle.”
“In the past two years, I have worked on a Welsh hill farm in lambing season, joined a male choir and competed at the National Eisteddfod, learned to row a coracle, been down one of the last Welsh coal mines, sent my middle-aged body out to train with Cardiff rugby players half my age.”
“They cover subjects such as Sports and Pastimes (Furry Dance, coracle fishing), 'Our Heritage of Skill '(The Cheese Maker, The Hand-Block Printer), and 'Our National Parks'.”
“He knelt there rocking to-and-fro in the flimsy coracle, the waves almost coming over its sides, he legs becoming numb with cold and tried to remember.”
“If the passage is safe, we will follow in the second coracle.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘coracle’.
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50 Ways to Leave Your Lover
walking, bicycle, bus, train, motorcycle, airplane, car, truck, segway, limousine, roller coaster, wheelbarrow and 130 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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Here Fishy Fishy!
A broad list of words and phrases describing schemes and devices, from ancient to modern, that humans have devised to catch or harvest our underwater friends.
hook, line and si..., hook, line, sinker, pole, rod, bobber, artificial bait, natural bait, fly rod, spinner, plug and 76 more...
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Out to Sea
If I had a boat
I'd go out on the ocean
And if I had a pony
I'd ride him on my boat
And we could all together
Go out on the ocean
Me upon my pony on my boat.boat, ship, skiff, barge, canoe, catamaran, yacht, scow, lifeboat, launch, ketch, dory and 303 more...
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yoshiyahu's Words
meme, disingenuous, antebellum, hypnagogic, philtrum, transference, prototypical, janissary, tuareg, shoal, caltrop, bannister and 89 more...
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the first list
an immense, grandiloquent list that loads like a thousand years sentence in stone. new words are in the other lists.
ridiculous, brummagem, predicament, sanctimonious, vapid, eschew, admonish, auspicious, capitulation, enumerate, lachrymose, tenet and 1648 more...
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Quaintnesses
For those who wish no words were ever forgotten
opprobrium, tedium, encomium, odium, ire, enmity, beguile, wile, brazen, popinjay, squit, hoity-toity and 1161 more...
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inkhorn's Words
inkhorn, aplomb, apotheosis, asinine, avatar, bombastic, boorish, bromide, bucolic, cagey, canvass, digress and 991 more...
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Words Covered in Faery Dust (C)
words that evoke magic, mystery, mayhem, magnificence or anything else that glimmers in the grass
cacophony, cad, cajole, calamity, camomile, camphor, candlemas, candy apple, canopy, canticle, caparison, caravan and 304 more...
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beatricks's Words
tremendous, naiad, thrush, samsara, thronging, nascent, broom, aristeia, streak, susurrant, reverberate, resistentialism and 352 more...
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Outlander series words
A place for me to keep words I found (or found anew) while reading Diana Gabaldon's Outlander series. (Culling my enormous "Learned (or Encountered) in Reading" list.)
gralloch, yeuk, corpse-candle, saprophytic, baldachin, Kermanshah, celandine, tynchal, quaich, mesentery, basidium, dittany and 244 more...
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wordhoard
dilatory, ataraxia, hermit, cabana, hut, dome, vestigial, porcine, crapulous, usufruct, curmudgeon, bombastic and 229 more...
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snickclunk's Words
bespoke, freshet, coquette, lath, victrola, feckless, viridian, lariat, sargasso, sobriquet, grift, sophistry and 134 more...
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sionnach's Words
contumely, fomite, holmgang, poltroon, eleemosynary, obsidian, nugatory, grindcore, felch, recrudescent, pyx, parenteral and 3271 more...
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Number 9 Dream
By David Mitchell
slag-heap, coracle, unsilt, aquiline, crispen, treatise, hippocampus, fortuitous, megalomania, malinger, dreck, escarpment and 97 more...
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Wrapped up in books
I'm reading books. And there are words and phrases I come upon for the first time, or that are used with usages that are new to me.
So, this is just a plain list of those words. Don't expect ...hobble, mackerel, crone, cavort, hoyden, rheumy, scatter, hiss, recoil, trundle, shatter, flaxen and 200 more...
Tweets
Looking for tweets for coracle.
chained_bear "There were even a few sailboats visible, far up the loch. Though when one drew near, I saw it was a coracle, a rough half-shell of tanned leather on a frame, not the sleek wooden shape I was used to."
—Diana Gabaldon, Outlander (NY: Delacorte Press, 1991), 350 Jan 2, 2010