Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- noun The principal sail of a vessel.
- noun A quadrilateral or triangular sail set from the after part of the mainmast on a fore-and-aft-rigged vessel.
- noun A square sail set from the main yard on a square-rigged vessel.
from The Century Dictionary.
- noun In a square-rigged vessel, the sail bent to the main-yard; the main course: in a fore-and-aft rigged vessel, the large sail set on the after part of the mainmast.
- noun plural The square sails on the mainmast: they are the course, or mainsail proper, the lower and upper topsails, the topgallantsail and royal, and also a skysail if the ship is lofty. Men-of-war usually carry single topsails instead of a divided sail.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- noun (Naut.) The principal sail in a ship or other vessel.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- noun nautical The largest (or only)
sail on asailing vessel .
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- noun the lowermost sail on the mainmast
Etymologies
Sorry, no etymologies found.
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Examples
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One model, of a full-rigged ship, twenty-five feet in length, with skysail yards and all sails set, precise in every minutest detail aloft and alow, was undamaged save for a rent in her mainsail from a fragment of shell.
With Funston's Men 1914
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But the big mainsail is still on, and the staysail, jib, and flying-jib are snapping and slashing at their sheets with every roll.
Chapter 9 1913
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But the big mainsail is still on, and the staysail, jib, and flying-jib are snapping and slashing at their sheets with every roll.
Chapter 9 1911
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By the time dinner was over they were forced to put double reefs in mainsail and jib, and still the gale had not reached its height.
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By the time dinner was over they were forced to put double reefs in mainsail and jib, and still the gale had not reached its height.
Chapter XIX 1902
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[Page 93] 1 Arabic – shoghool: a rope by which the mainsail is regulated.
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Sailing around with just the mainsail is an excellent way to learn the principles and mechanics of changing direction, but it is not as much fun as sailing with both the jib and mainsail.
Sailing Fundamentals Gary Jobson 1998
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Sailing around with just the mainsail is an excellent way to learn the principles and mechanics of changing direction, but it is not as much fun as sailing with both the jib and mainsail.
Sailing Fundamentals Gary Jobson 1998
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Thus for this purpose a mainsail is a piece of jute bagging, if you please, or ordinary canvas, and a hawser is a flexible rope.
The Dead Men's Song Being the Story of a Poem and a Reminiscent Sketch of its Author Young Ewing Allison Champion Ingraham Hitchcock
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The skipper's eye is on the mainsail, which is the point of pivoting.
All Afloat A Chronicle of Craft and Waterways William Charles Henry Wood 1905
chained_bear commented on the word mainsail
Usage on duck up.
October 14, 2008