Definitions

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

  • noun The part of a ship where the hawseholes are located.
  • noun A hawsehole.
  • noun The space between the bows and anchors of an anchored ship.
  • noun The arrangement of a ship's anchor cables when both starboard and port anchors are secured.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun A Scotch form of halse.
  • noun Exaltation.
  • noun That part of a vessel's bow where the holes for her cables to pass through are cut: now used chiefly in phrases describing the condition of a vessel's chains when she is moored with both starboard and port anchors down.
  • noun The space between the ship and her anchors: as, he was anchored in our hawse; the brig fell foul of our hawse, etc.
  • noun A ridge or neck (generally at the head of two oppositely-descending stream-valleys) which connects two higher ridges or summits, as on the Scottish border and in the Lake district of the North of England.
  • To raise.

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

  • noun A hawse hole.
  • noun The situation of the cables when a vessel is moored with two anchors, one on the starboard, the other on the port bow.
  • noun The distance ahead to which the cables usually extend
  • noun That part of a vessel's bow in which are the hawse holes for the cables.
  • noun See under Athwart.
  • noun a hawse in which the cables cross each other, or are twisted together.
  • noun a block used to stop up a hawse hole at sea; -- called also hawse plug.
  • noun one of the foremost timbers of a ship, through which the hawse hole is cut.
  • noun Same as Hawse block (above).
  • noun [Cant] to enter the naval service at the lowest grade.
  • noun to veer out a little more cable and bring the chafe and strain on another part.

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

  • noun nautical The part of the bow containing the hawseholes.
  • noun nautical A hawsehole or hawsepipe.
  • noun nautical The horizontal distance or area between an anchored vessel's bows and the actual position of her anchor(s).
  • adjective nautical A position relative to the course and position of a vessel, somewhat forward of the stem.
  • adverb nautical Said of a vessel lying to two anchors, streamed from either bow.

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

  • noun the hole that an anchor rope passes through

Etymologies

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

[Middle English hals, forward curve of a strake, probably from Old Norse hāls, neck, ship's bow; see kwel- in Indo-European roots.]

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Examples

  • These memories dealt with a remote time, when a hawse was a hawse, and you couldn't have it put all over you by a lot of slick young smarties that could do a few things with a monkey wrench.

    The Wrong Twin Harry Leon Wilson 1903

  • Over their coffee, they heard the rumble of an anchor-chain through a hawse-pipe, tokening the arrival of a vessel.

    A GOBOTO NIGHT 2010

  • I can hear the chorus chanting, "Move On," and I am telling myself, too, Come On, Giddyup Girl, Move dat hawse on down the road!

    Sally Fay: Dealing With The Rough Ride Of Divorce Sally Fay 2011

  • I can hear the chorus chanting, "Move On," and I am telling myself, too, Come On, Giddyup Girl, Move dat hawse on down the road!

    Sally Fay: Dealing With The Rough Ride Of Divorce Sally Fay 2011

  • Even as he spoke, they heard the rumble of chain through hawse-pipe, and from the veranda saw a big black-painted schooner, swinging to her just-caught anchor.

    Chapter 14 2010

  • As the chain roared and surged through the hawse-pipe he noticed a number of native women, lusciously large as only those of Polynesia are, in flowing ahu's, flower-crowned, stream out on the deck of the schooner on the beach.

    THE DEVILS OF FUATINO 2010

  • When I knocked the shackle-bolt loose, the chain roared out through the hawse-hole and into the sea.

    Chapter 39 2010

  • Like an avalanche, she shot forward and down as the sea astern struck her with the force of a thousand battering rams, burying her bow to the catheads in the milky foam at the bottom that came on deck in all directions - forward, astern, to right and left, through the hawse-pipes and over the rail.

    Story of a Typhoon off the Coast of Japan 2010

  • Like an avalanche, she shot forward and down as the sea astern struck her with the force of a thousand battering rams, burying her bow to the catheads in the milky foam at the bottom that came on deck in all directions - forward, astern, to right and left, through the hawse-pipes and over the rail.

    Story of a Typhoon off the Coast of Japan 2010

  • Well, he'll drown there the way she's shipping water through the hawse - pipes.

    Chris Farrington, Able Seaman 2010

Comments

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  • "...there were occasions when Jack was tempted to ask his way of the many fishermen, English and Dutch, who haunted those perilous banks in their shallow-draught doggers, schuyts, busses, howkers, and even bugalets, and who made his progress all the more uneasy by lying across his hawse until the last possible minute or suddenly looming out of the darkness without a single light so that he had to throw all aback." --Patrick O'Brian, The Surgeon's Mate, 285

    February 9, 2008

  • "'It will be strange if you do not get a spotted dog. He particularly asked me to tell him your favorite dishes.'

    "'I shall look forward to that'—his voice rose effortlessly to an enormous volume as he called out 'Come athwart my hawse and I shall ride you down, you half-baked son of an Egyptian fart,' to a wool-gathering jolly-boat; and art echoed from either shore. 'But now I think of it,' he went on..."

    --Patrick O'Brian, Treason's Harbour, 73

    February 15, 2008