Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- noun Nautical A small flatbottom fishing boat with a lugsail on a raking mast.
- noun Scots A kind of flatbottom rowboat.
from The Century Dictionary.
- noun A flattish-bottomed, clincher-built fishing-boat with a square stern.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- noun A flat-floored fishing boat with a lug sail, and a drop rudder extending from two to four feet below the keel. It was originally used on the stormy coast of Yorkshire, England.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- noun nautical small
flat-bottomed fishing boat suitable forlaunching from abeach , found on the north-east coast of England and in Scotland.
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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Looking to eastward you saw a dark semicircular streak on the water, and inside this streak a coble glided slowly hither and thither.
The Romance of the Coast James Runciman 1871
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Thus, after years of experiment, the "coble" was designed in its present form; and these craft are as much the product of their special locality as are the men who man them.
The Romance of the Coast James Runciman 1871
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Thou killest the fish with spear, line, and coble-net; and we, with snares and with nets, which work by the ebb and the flow of the tide.
Redgauntlet 2008
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They were to man the fishing coble at Norfolk Island.
Morgan’s Run Colleen McCullough 2000
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He really does have good manners, thought Richard as he strode alongside the Commandant down the pathway which led from the sawpit to Government House and the storage sheds, one of which, he noted, held the coble and an even smaller boat made from the pieces of the old coble which had foundered on the reef and drowned four men.
Morgan’s Run Colleen McCullough 2000
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Willy Dring, Joe Robinson, Neddy Smith and Tom Watson—the four young, strong, unattached, sea-mad men—were to man the coble to fish whenever possible.
Morgan’s Run Colleen McCullough 2000
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The only trouble was that the fish were capricious; on some days the coble would come in with a hundred, on other days with none.
Morgan’s Run Colleen McCullough 2000
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Unable to make contact with the first of the two sighted ships, Lieutenant Clark in the coble headed for the second one and managed to board her.
Morgan’s Run Colleen McCullough 2000
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The coble got out today and Johnny is dancing attendance on Captain Hunter, so I have his share too.
Morgan’s Run Colleen McCullough 2000
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The coble, so called because it was clinker-built in the manner of a Scotch fishing dinghy, very flat-bottomed, glided across the reef without grazing itself and stroked the mere 150 yards across the lagoon to the straight beach, where some of the surviving members of the community stood waiting: six women, one—the oldest—big with child, and five men whose ages, if their faces reflected their years, varied between shaveling young and grizzled old.
Morgan’s Run Colleen McCullough 2000
rolig commented on the word coble
A flat-bottomed fishing boat with a lugsail, used mainly in northern England and Scotland for salmon. (Dictionary.com Unabridged)
June 3, 2008