Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- noun Nautical An apparatus used for hoisting weights, consisting of a vertical spool-shaped cylinder that is rotated manually or by machine and around which a cable is wound.
- noun A small cylindrical shaft used to drive magnetic tape at a constant speed in a tape recorder.
from The Century Dictionary.
- noun An apparatus working on the principle of the wheel and axle, used for raising weights or applying power.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- noun A vertical cleated drum or cylinder, revolving on an upright spindle, and surmounted by a drumhead with sockets for bars or levers. It is much used, especially on shipboard, for moving or raising heavy weights or exerting great power by traction upon a rope or cable, passing around the drum. It is operated either by steam power or by a number of men walking around the capstan, each pushing on the end of a lever fixed in its socket.
- noun one of the long bars or levers by which the capstan is worked; a handspike..
- noun to drop the pawls so that they will catch in the notches of the pawl ring, and prevent the capstan from turning back.
- noun to prepare the for use, by putting the bars in the sockets.
- noun to slack the tension of the rope or cable wound around it.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- noun nautical A vertical
cleated drum orcylinder , revolving on an uprightspindle , and surmounted by a drumhead with sockets for bars or levers. It is much used, especially on shipboard, for moving or raising heavy weights or exerting great power by traction upon a rope or cable, passing around the drum. It is operated either by steam power or by a number of men walking around the capstan, each pushing on the end of a lever fixed in its socket. - noun electronics A rotating
spindle used to move recording tape through the mechanism of a tape recorder.
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- noun a windlass rotated in a horizontal plane around a vertical axis; used on ships for weighing anchor or raising heavy sails
Etymologies
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
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Examples
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Aside from a large winch, called a capstan, and various blocks and pulleys to take off some of the strain, eighteenth-century sailing ships relied on brute man power.
John Paul Jones 9781451603996 2003
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Aside from a large winch, called a capstan, and various blocks and pulleys to take off some of the strain, eighteenth-century sailing ships relied on brute man power.
John Paul Jones 9781451603996 2003
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The best, like all good things, has gone for ever, and this best way was for a thing called a capstan to have sticking out from it, movable, and fitted into its upper rim, other things called capstan -- bars.
First and Last Hilaire Belloc 1911
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The sailors had tied their prisoner with ropes to the heavy iron wheel in the stern of the boat called a capstan; so that as he moved he would be obliged to drag it round and thus help to work the ship.
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A small, strong raft, it may be forty feet square, with an upright windlass in its centre, called a capstan, is fastened to some part of the boom.
A Study Of Hawthorne Lathrop, George P 1876
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A small, strong raft, it may be forty feet square, with an upright windlass in its centre, called a capstan, is fastened to some part of the boom.
A Study of Hawthorne George Parsons Lathrop 1874
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Directly abaft the capstan was the fore-hatch, over which lay the path of those who walked around at the bars.
Down the Rhine Young America in Germany Oliver Optic 1859
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Also crazy "capstan" control of your reel-to-reel for early time-stretch, which, if you can understand it, makes time travel seem possible after all.
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In these kind of capstan-head court-martials, at which captains will sometimes administer reefers 'law, "Woe to the weakest!"
Rattlin the Reefer Edward Howard 1820
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Loaded down, Logan and Rytlock staggered out the cabin door and seated themselves on the capstan.
GuildWars Edge of Destiny J. Robert King 2011
Sim427 commented on the word capstan
The departing ships, when the sailors heave at the capstan;
—Evening—me in my room—the setting sun,
The setting summer sun shining in my open window, showing the swarm of flies, suspended,
balancing
in the air in the centre of the room, darting athwart, up and down, casting swift shadows
in
specks
on the opposite wall, where the shine is;
Walt Whitman - American Feuillage
September 22, 2018