Definitions

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

  • noun A rope used in trimming a foresail.
  • noun The space near the bow of an open boat.

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

  • noun nautical one of the sheets (ropes) that controls the foresail

Etymologies

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Examples

  • "Take a pull on that foresheet," ordered Meadows, but before he could be obeyed the hands he addressed were checked by a shout from Baddlestone.

    Hornblower And The Crisis Forester, C. S. 1967

  • Suddenly there was a lift in the rain, and between them and the land they saw another flare, 'Down with the foresheet!

    Heroes of the Goodwin Sands Thomas Stanley Treanor

  • Jack thought they had weathered the worst of it, when the foresheet parted and the clew of the foresail, going through the lower foretopsail, split it in ribbons.

    Teddy The Story of a Little Pickle

  • Haul aft the foresheet and sail her up to receive a tow line.

    The Rover 1923

  • When I do that you will let go the foresheet to help the tartane to fly into the wind's eye.

    The Rover 1923

  • Bolt said that he had found three dead men, two on the after-deck and one lying at the bottom of the open hold with the bare end of the foresheet in his hand --- ` ` shot down, I suppose, just as he had let it go, '' he commented.

    The Rover 1923

  • And meanwhile, in the waist up to his knees in water -- so low the schooner lay -- the captain was hacking at the foresheet with a pocket knife.

    The Ebb-Tide Lloyd Osbourne 1907

  • I was hauling in the foresheet and belaying when a sudden waft of fragrance fetched me upright, with head thrown back and nostrils inhaling the breeze.

    Sir John Constantine Memoirs of His Adventures At Home and Abroad and Particularly in the Island of Corsica: Beginning with the Year 1756 Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch 1903

  • We reefed the foresail and set him, and hauled aft the foresheet; the helm was hard-a-weather.

    The Junior Classics — Volume 5 William Patten 1902

  • Harvey could feel the land close round him once more, with all its thousands of people asleep, and the smell of earth after rain, and the familiar noise of a switching-engine coughing to herself in a freight-yard; and all those things made his heart beat and his throat dry up as he stood by the foresheet.

    Captains Courageous Rudyard Kipling 1900

Comments

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  • "It took fifty-seven men to haul the foresheet aft, to tally and belay; and as the strain increased so the Surprise heeled another strake, another and yet another, until she showed a broad streak of copper on her windward side..."

    --Patrick O'Brian, The Far Side of the World, 352

    February 23, 2008