Dictionary

spritsail en · NOUN

Etymology

From sprit + sail.

Meanings

1. A form of three- or four-sided fore-and-aft sail and its rig, supporting the leech of the sail by means of a sprit.
   • Such a ship as the Rose of Devon frigate, standing out for the open sea, is a sight the world no longer affords. Those ships are “gone, gone, gone with lost Atlantis.” Their lofty poops, their little bonaventure masts, their lateen sails aft, their high forecastles and tall bowsprits with the square spritsail flaunted before the fiddlehead, came down from an even earlier day 1923, Charles Boardman Hawes, The Dark Frigate, Chapter 6:
   • Finding it was like to overblow, we took in our Sprit-ſail, and ſtood by to hand the Fore-ſail; but making foul Weather, we look'd the Guns were all faſt, and handed the Miſſen. 1726 October 28, [Jonathan Swift], “A Great Storm Described, the Long-Boat Sent to Fetch Water, the Author Goes with It to Discover the Country. […]”, in Travels into Several Remote Nations of the World. […] [Gulliver’s Travels], volume I, London: […] Benj[amin] Motte, […], →OCLC, part II (A Voyage to Brobdingnag), page 151:

Forms

Translations (6)

nrf vaile dé sprède (type of sail) · et priitpuri (type of sail) · fi varpapurje (type of sail) · de Blinde (type of sail) · ca civadera (type of sail) · sv sprisegel (type of sail)