top-block

Definitions

noun Nautical, a large iron-bound block hung to an eye-bolt in the cap, used in swaying and lowering the topmast.
noun In a vehicle, a projection upon which the bows of the top rest when it is down.

noun (Naut.) A large ironbound block strapped with a hook, and, when used, hung to an eyebolt in the cap, -- used in swaying and lowering the topmast.

noun nautical A large ironbound block strapped with a hook, and, when used, hung to an eyebolt in the cap, used in swaying and lowering the topmast.

Sorry, no etymologies found.

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And just after, crashing into the little hair trunk, down came a great top-block, right through the scuttle, narrowly missing my

Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. I (of 2) Herman Melville 1855
Unhooking a top-block, down it came into the forecastle, charitably commissioned with the demolition of Jarl's cocoa-nut, then more exposed to the view of an aerial observer than my own.

Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. I (of 2) Herman Melville 1855
The best way that I could think of to manage this piece of work -- and I have not since thought of any way better -- was to make fast a line to the lower end of the top-gallant mast just above the cap of the topmast and to carry this line through the top-block and so down to the deck, and there to pass it through another block to the capstan and haul it taut and stop it; and when all that was in order, and the stays cut, to get up into the cross-trees and saw through the spar just below where I had whipped it with my line.

In the Sargasso Sea A Novel 1881
a petty officer on the Spaniard bent over to sink the skiff with a ponderous top-block, our boatswain cleft his skull with a musket ball, and brought home the block as a trophy!

Captain Canot or, Twenty Years of an African Slaver Theodore Canot