Definitions

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

  • noun A rope used to raise or lower a sail, flag, or yard.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun Nautical, a rope or purchase used to hoist or lower yards or sails on their respective masts or stays. All yards have halyards except the lower yards and lower topsail-yards.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun (Naut.) A rope or tackle for hoisting or lowering yards, sails, flags, etc.

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

  • noun nautical A rope used to raise or lower a sail, flag, spar or yard.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun a rope for raising or lowering a sail or flag

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Alteration (influenced by yard) of Middle English halier, from halen, to pull; see hale.]

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