Definitions

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

  • noun nautical A short spar, at the bows of a ship, that serves as a flagpole to fly a flag (a jack)

Etymologies

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Examples

  • The effect of each aberration is telling: The fiery, foreground plume draws our eyes to the Temeraire's ghostly, imagined masts, and to its broken spar that hangs limply at front, no longer supporting a jackstaff or the Union flag that was removed when it was sold to a ship-breaker.

    The Tale of the Temeraire 2009

  • Would you bear me out in that, relatively speaking, with her jackstaff jerking at her pennyladders, why not, and sizing a fair sail, knowest thout the kind?

    Finnegans Wake 2006

  • The Austran ensign drooped from the jackstaff in the heavy still air that blanketed the harbor.

    Wellspring of Chaos Modesitt, L. E. 2004

  • As I went by I see it was a lantern hanging on the jackstaff of a double-hull ferryboat.

    The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn 2003

  • Some of the boats had what they call a ‘night hawk’ on the jackstaff, a thing which you could see when it was in the right position against the sky or the water, though it seldom was in the right position and was generally pretty useless.

    Mark Twain: A Biography 2003

  • She was new then, however; a singular sort of a single-engine boat, with a Chinese captain and a Choctaw crew, forecastle on her stern, wheels in the center, and the jackstaff

    Mark Twain: A Biography 2003

  • At a jackstaff flew a pennant Alucius had never seen, one with two crossed scepters, both metallic blue, if subtly different in design, set in a sharp eight-pointed, brilliant green star.

    Darkness Modesitt, L. E. 2003

  • The Bristan ensign - the sun above an ice floe - flew at the jackstaff, and emblazoned on the upper part of the ship's stem in gilt letters was the name Nyessa.

    The Order War Modesitt, L. E. 1995

  • The Llyse kept abreast of the trader until a blue-edged white banner floated on the aft jackstaff.

    The Order War Modesitt, L. E. 1995

  • The Bristan ensign " the sun above an ice floe " flew at the jackstaff, and emblazoned on the upper part of the ship's stem in gilt letters was the name Nyessa.

    The Order War Modesitt, L. E. 1995

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