Definitions
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- n. A canoe made from the trunk of a single tree hollowed out; a dugout: used by the American Indians.
- n. A vessel made by sawing a large canoe in two in the middle, and inserting a plank to widen it. These were much used on the coast of the Carolinas in the eighteenth century, and even made voyages by open sea to Norfolk, carrying 40 to 80 barrels of pitch or tar. One 30 feet long and 5 feet 7 inches wide is called “a small pettiaugua” in the Charleston (S. C.) “Gazette,” 1744. Such a boat was also used on the Mississippi and its tributaries, where it is called
pirogue and periogue. Seepirogue . - n. A large flat-bottomed boat, without keel but-with lee-board, decked in at each end but open in the middle, propelled by oars, or by sails on two masts which could be struck. This was much used formerly in navigating shoal waters along the whole American coast, and sometimes also on the Mississippi and its affluents.
Wiktionary
GNU Webster's 1913
- n. See pirogue.
Etymologies
- From Spanish piragua, in turn from the Carib for dugout. (Wiktionary)
Examples
“The periagua is a strange rough boat, but the crew were still stranger: I doubt if six uglier little men ever got into a boat together.”
“The road to Cucao was so very bad that we determined to embark in a periagua.”
“Re-embarking in the periagua, we returned across the lake, and then mounted our horses.”
“He had put in for fresh water, and to refit, at the place where I first escaped; and, having discovered my companions at the small island of their retreat, sent a periagua full of men to take them.”
“But the enemy either having seen us before lowering our sail, or heard the noise of the oars, followed with all speed, in an eight or ten oared periagua.”
“While entering the mouth of the harbor, in a moonlight evening, we saw a great flash, and heard a report much louder than that of a musket, proceed from a large periagua, which we observed near the Castle of”
“Between these two extremes flutter all the great sisterhood of shallops, sloops, pinks, schooners, snows, the almost obsolete batteau and periagua, the gundelow with its picturesque lateen sail, and all the winged host that are now merely names in New England's maritime history.”
“The cheer was answered by Sawkins 'men, from the periagua, as they fired into the frigate's ports.”
On the Spanish Main Or, Some English forays on the Isthmus of Darien.
“If they were making a periagua, they left the stern "flat" -- that is, cut off sharply without modelling; if they were making a canoa, they pointed both ends, as a Red Indian points his birch-bark.”
On the Spanish Main Or, Some English forays on the Isthmus of Darien.
“Sawkins ran his canoa -- which was a mere sieve of cedar wood, owing to the broadside -- alongside the second periagua, and took her steering oar.”
On the Spanish Main Or, Some English forays on the Isthmus of Darien.
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘periagua’.
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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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Selected Terms from Falconer's New Un...
1815 edition; ed. William Burney (London: Chatham Publishing, 2006).
widows' men, ballatoon, boomkin, leefange, falconet, maculae, lepus, koff, pardo, periagua, dingass, saik and 238 more...
Tweets
Looking for tweets for periagua.
chained_bear "... a sort of large canoe, composed of the trunks of two trees, hollowed and united into one fabric; whereas canoes in general are formed of the body of one tree. The periagua is used in the Leeward Islands, South America, and in the Gulf of Mexico. Their masts and sails have a great resemblance to the proa, &c.
"There are also double periguas used in Otaheite Tahiti, &c. which are constructed much longer and wider than that above-mentioned."
—Falconer's New Universal Dictionary of the Marine (1816), 341
Alternate spelling of pirogue, perhaps. Oct 11, 2008