Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- noun A fast, lightly armed warship, smaller than a destroyer, often armed for antisubmarine operations.
- noun An obsolete sailing warship, smaller than a frigate, usually armed with one tier of guns.
from The Century Dictionary.
- noun A wooden ship of war, flush-decked, frigate-rigged, and having only One tier of guns.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- noun nautical, historical A flush-decked
warship of the 17th-18th centuries having a singletier ofguns ; it ranked next below afrigate ; -- called in the United States navy a sloop of war. - noun nautical In a modern navy, a lightly
armed andarmoured blue water warship, smaller than afrigate , capable oftransoceanic duty.
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- noun a highly maneuverable escort warship; smaller than a destroyer
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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The _Iroquois_ and her sisters, built in the fifties, were vessels of the kind to which I have applied the term corvette, then very common in all navies; cruisers only; scouts, or commerce-destroyers.
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The English did not apply the term corvette to brigs, but designated such two-masted vessels as brigs-of-war, though they are sometimes spoken of as brig-sloops.
How Britannia Came to Rule the Waves Updated to 1900 William Henry Giles Kingston 1847
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A corvette is so much smaller than a destroyer that I remember going aboard a destroyer a while back, after a spell in a corvette, and congratulating the Captain on the enormous size of his ship.
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The corvette is a smart-looking vessel, of 1200 tons burden, and barque rigged.
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A corvette is a vessel slightly smaller than a frigate and is suited mainly for coastal protection work.
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She nodded and held out what the folk of Mejis called a corvette - "little packet" was the literal definition; "little purse" was the practical one.
Wizard and Glass King, Stephen 1997
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Mediterranean to look out for a French and Spanish squadron, which had been on the coast of Portugal, but returned to Ferrol --- I received all your letters by the Turkish corvette, which is arrived at Messina.
The Life of the Right Honourable Horatio Lord Viscount Nelson, Volume 2 James Harrison
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I myself have usually called them by the French name corvette, which has a recognized place in English marine phraseology, and means a sloop-of-war of the smaller class.
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This all-purpose nature determined its classification: instead of being given third rank common for Russian ships, such as small hunter-killer, small missile boat, etc., the new ship was classified as a corvette, which, according to Western standard, is an all-purpose warship.
RIA Novosti 2010
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This all-purpose nature determined its classification: instead of being given third rank common for Russian ships, such as small hunter-killer, small missile boat, etc., the new ship was classified as a corvette, which, according to Western standard, is an all-purpose warship.
RIA Novosti 2010
Gammerstang commented on the word corvette
(noun) - (1) A young sodomite. --John Farmer's Vocabula Amatoria: A French-English Glossary of Words, Phrases, and Allusions Occurring in the Works of Rabelais, Voltaire, Molière, and Others, 1896 (2) From Latin corbita, a large ship for traffic, French corvette. --Hensleigh Wedgwood's Dictionary of English Etymology, 1878
March 16, 2018
madmouth commented on the word corvette
This slashifies the lyrics of Little Red Corvette for me rather
March 17, 2018
bilby commented on the word corvette
Good contender for my new list Sodomite Or Small Frigate.
March 17, 2018
madmouth commented on the word corvette
*screencaps at once*
March 17, 2018