Definitions

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

  • noun A medium-sized ship's boat used for rough work and minor tasks.

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

  • noun Alternative form of jolly boat.

Etymologies

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

[Origin unknown.]

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Examples

  • It was a time or rather—since ordinary time was gone by the board—a series of instant shifts and expedients, of surviving from one stunning thunderclap and invasion of water to the next and between them making fast such things as the jollyboat, the binnacle itself and the booms that had carried away.

    Archive 2006-12-01 Bruce Schauble 2006

  • It was a time or rather—since ordinary time was gone by the board—a series of instant shifts and expedients, of surviving from one stunning thunderclap and invasion of water to the next and between them making fast such things as the jollyboat, the binnacle itself and the booms that had carried away.

    Heavy Weather Bruce Schauble 2006

  • As on your physiognomical voyage you sail round his vast head in your jollyboat, your noble conceptions of him are never insulted by the reflection that he has a nose to be pulled.

    Moby Dick; or the Whale 2002

  • Enquiries aboard the Dutch East Indiaman had revealed that Power had arrived alone in the Alexander jollyboat and begged for work as a seaman on the voyage to Holland.

    Morgan’s Run Colleen McCullough 2000

  • It was the jollyboat the search parties from Alexander and Supply found first, tied by its painter to a rock in a deserted cove; Power, sound asleep thanks to sorrow and Dutch gin, was curled up behind a pile of stones, and came quietly.

    Morgan’s Run Colleen McCullough 2000

  • Enquiries aboard the Dutch East Indiaman had revealed that Power had arrived alone in the Alexander jollyboat and begged for work as a seaman on the voyage to Holland.

    Morgan’s Run Colleen McCullough 2000

  • Having lost the argument, Shairp took the jollyboat and went to visit a congenial colleague aboard another vessel bound for Botany Bay.

    Morgan’s Run Colleen McCullough 2000

  • Having lost the argument, Shairp took the jollyboat and went to visit a congenial colleague aboard another vessel bound for Botany Bay.

    Morgan’s Run Colleen McCullough 2000

  • The anchors down and Lieutenant Shortland gone in the jollyboat to Supply to see Governor Phillip, Richard stood alone at the rail and gazed for a long time at the place to which, by an Imperial Order-in-Council, he had been transported until the 23rd of March, 1792.

    Morgan’s Run Colleen McCullough 2000

  • There is one section of the reef is sufficiently submerged to get a jollyboat over.

    Morgan’s Run Colleen McCullough 2000

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