Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- n. Nautical A fore-and-aft sail set on the mizzenmast.
- n. Nautical A mizzenmast.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- n. Nautical, the aftermost fore-and-aft sail in a ship, set abaft the mizzenmast, and having its head extended by a gaff; a spanker. See spanker.
- Noting the hindmost pair of horns in a five-horned giraffe, a small pair of projections arising from the lambdoid crest, back of the larger frontal horns.
Wiktionary
- n. nautical mizzenmast
- n. nautical A fore-and-aft sail set on a mizzenmast.
GNU Webster's 1913
- adj. (Naut.) Hindmost; nearest the stern
- n. (Naut.) The hindmost of the fore and aft sails of a three-masted vessel; also, the spanker.
WordNet 3.0
- n. third mast from the bow in a vessel having three or more masts; the after and shorter mast of a yawl, ketch, or dandy
- n. fore-and-aft sail set on the mizzenmast
Etymologies
- From Middle French misaine, modified from Old French migenne (through influence from Italian mezzana), from Catalan mitjana, feminine of mitjan, ultimately from Latin medianus. (Wiktionary)
- Middle English mesan, from Old French misaine, Old Spanish mezana or Old Italian mezzana, all ultimately from Latin mediānus, of the middle, from medius, middle; see medhyo- in Indo-European roots. (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)
Examples
“Puff follows puff, and I am glad the mizzen is furled.”
“The tall mast is the mainmast, the short mast is the mizzen; some ketches carry square sails on the main, some carry a topsail on the mizzen -- the distinctive mark of the ketch being that the mizzen is a pole-mast and stepped in front of the stern-post.”
“The top of the mizzen was the first to disappear, then followed the main-top; and soon, of what had been a noble vessel, not a vestige was to be seen.”
“American and other, were at half-mast, as was the admiral's square blue flag at the mizzen, which is never lowered while he remains on duty on board.”
“The students sat in the open cockpit to learn terms such as mizzen mast, jib and stanchion.”
“ "Raft coming!" called the mizzen lookout, stimulat-ing a rush toward the stern.”
“When I finished, I pulled my sleeping bag out from the foot locker, hauled it up top to the main deck and spread it out between the main and mizzen masts.”
The Huffington Post: Jerry Nelson: Sea Spray and Time Travel
“Abruptly, from the mizzen-mast, came a snap of breakage and crash of fabric.”
“He bounded away along the poop again, shouting for men for the mizzen-braces.”
“They did it on deck, sir, right aft there by the mizzen-traveler.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘mizzen’.
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Old words
Old words: modern English words that are old according to criteria that are still vague: Either words common to several old languages or words substantially similar in old English. Please add to or...
mother, father, bark, spit, old, fire, this, that, black, thou, to give, hand and 259 more...
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Gene Wolfe
Please contribute your favorite words from any of Gene Wolfe’s books to this prize-winning list.
In case you come across words in this list which are too commonplace to fit in, please ...gallipot, roost, badelaire, oblesque, execration, dhole, amschaspand, arctother, chalcedony, penitence, asimi, autarch and 839 more...
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phrontistery - m
from phrontistery.info
mabble, mabsoot, macadamize, macarism, macarize, macaronic, macerate, macerator, machair, machairodont, machicolation, machinule and 898 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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Scriptie: Master and Commander
Nice ambient words from the movie. (With apologies to Patrick O'Brian.) Aaaah, life at sea...aboard a hulk of the British navy in 1805...
surprise, acheron, guns, souls, oceans, battlefields, prize, burn, sink, privateer, hammock, lantern and 118 more...
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The Whiteness of the Whale
Words in Melville's "Moby Dick"
grapnels, spile, pea coffee, farrago, grego, bosky, bombazine, brevet, cenotaph, cupidity, kelson, obliquity and 164 more...
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pixistix's Words
cumquat, circumlocution, panoply, propinquity, contumely, quietus, fardel, tmesis, tipsy, giddy, trudge, vortex and 211 more...
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Interesting Scrabble words
Interesting words worth @ least 15 points.
smoochy, zareba, hyphal, djellaba, cloque, pyxidium, qindarka, squiffy, howbeit, chthonic, quinta, azimuthal and 264 more...
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KaeZoo's Words
flingers, unhinged, driven, flanked, arboreal, venerable, endearing, iconoclastic, fletcher, competent, fireproof, cavernous and 215 more...
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...:::bella:::...
originally started as an attempt to collect words I found visually and auditorially beautiful, as well as psychically evocative, this has become nothing more than a grab bag of word curiosities, a ...
bergamot, jambalaya, bee's knees, heliotrope, hosanna, gamboge, aureole, filial, madrigal, multilingual, sacrosanct, sojourn and 1072 more...
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good words
words that are mostly fun to say or just lovely
undulate, voluptuous, whimsy, parse, dank, cerulean, peen, traipsing, listless, coup de grace, reconnoiter, mercurial and 499 more...
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Palabrarium
The delicious wonderful words that I love terribly dearly and without which, the world would be a less inventive and worthwhile place. Also, ostensibly, the reason 1984 and esperanto secretly suck.
panoply, footpad, piccalilli, snickersnee, marl, hispid, greengage, slumgullion, golliwog, mumbletypeg, circumlocution, quiescent and 366 more...
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pirates
foc'sle, pirate, buccaneer, landlubber, dubloon, bilge, barque, privateer, brigantine, bosun, corsair, coffer and 21 more...
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around bend words
IE roots ank-, ant- and others
angle, ankle, ankylosaur, england, anchor, ancon, elbow, ankylosis, ancylostomiasis, hook, uncinate, uncus and 66 more...
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If Snoop Dogg made a list
Fo' shizzle my chizzle, here's a lizzle!
sizzle, swizz, swizzle, twizzle, whizz, wrizzle, bedrizzle, bizz, crizzle, dizz, drizzle, hizz and 14 more...
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sailing
ballast, beam, boom, bow, bowsprit, bridge, buoy, chart, cockpit, current, davits, deck and 86 more...
Tweets
Looking for tweets for mizzen.

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