Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • adjective Parallel with the length of a structure, such as a ship or house; running lengthwise.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • adjective nautical parallel with the keel, that is, going from bow to stern (as opposed to square-rigged).

Etymologies

Sorry, no etymologies found.

Support

Help support Wordnik (and make this page ad-free) by adopting the word fore-and-aft.

Examples

  • Immediately the lifts and lower-topsail sheets parted, and with a fore-and-aft pitch of the ship the spar up-ended and crashed to the deck upon Number Three hatch, destroying that section of the bridge in its fall.

    CHAPTER XLVI 2010

  • "Against everyone's advice, I bought a 1930s wooden classic yacht," the 45-year-old Englishman says as he prepares the 65-feet Marconi-rigged cutter—a fore-and-aft sailing boat rig with triangular sails—for a day of racing in Mallorca.

    For Fixer-Uppers, It's All Hands on Deck Christine Pirovolakis 2011

  • The crojack was taken in, and some of the outer fore-and-aft handsails, whose order of names I can never remember.

    CHAPTER XXIX 2010

  • I built her plank by plank, and copper-fastened her, selected her masts and every timber of her, and personally signed on her full ship's complement fore-and-aft, and outfitted her amongst the Jews, and sailed with her to the South Seas and the treasure buried a fathom under the sand.

    CHAPTER XIII 2010

  • Toyota's Sienna has a second row that slides fore-and-aft over a generous range, aiding flexibility.

    First Drive: 2011 Honda Odyssey minivan 2010

  • Toyota's Sienna has a second row that slides fore-and-aft over a generous range, aiding flexibility.

    First Drive: 2011 Honda Odyssey minivan 2010

  • Packs at the alien's sides puffed gas from fore-and-aft snouts.

    I Don’t Understand ? Jack Varnell 2010

  • * In Caenorhabditis the original cell, called Z, has a front end which is different from its rear end, and this difference will come to represent the eventual fore-and-aft body axis – anterior (front) and posterior (rear).

    THE GREATEST SHOW ON EARTH RICHARD DAWKINS 2009

  • The head and neck too, follow the same segmented plan, but it is harder to discern, even in fish, because the segments, instead of being neatly laid out in a fore-and-aft array as they are in the spinal column, have become all jumbled up over evolutionary time.

    THE GREATEST SHOW ON EARTH RICHARD DAWKINS 2009

  • * In Caenorhabditis the original cell, called Z, has a front end which is different from its rear end, and this difference will come to represent the eventual fore-and-aft body axis – anterior (front) and posterior (rear).

    THE GREATEST SHOW ON EARTH RICHARD DAWKINS 2009

Comments

Log in or sign up to get involved in the conversation. It's quick and easy.