Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- noun A light boat propelled by sails or oars, formerly used as a tender for merchant and war vessels.
- noun Any of various kinds of ship's boats.
from The Century Dictionary.
- noun Nautical: A small vessel, generally with two masts rigged like those of a schooner, and capable of being propelled by oars; a galley: so called because built of pine wood; poetically, any light sailing-vessel.
- noun A large double-banked ship's boat.
- noun A procuress; a prostitute.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- noun A small vessel propelled by sails or oars, formerly employed as a tender, or for coast defence; -- called originally,
spynace orspyne . - noun A man-of-war's boat.
- noun obsolete A procuress; a pimp.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- noun nautical A light boat, traditionally propelled by sails, but may also be a rowboat. Pinnaces are usually messenger boats, carrying messages among the larger ships of a fleet.
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- noun a boat for communication between ship and shore
Etymologies
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
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Examples
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An 'I'd ha' done it, too, only the pinnace from the flagship was just comin 'alongside.
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Thither we went in a fine boat they call a pinnace, with six oars; his servants, and horses, and baggage going in the ferry-boat.
Moll Flanders 2003
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Thither we went in a fine boat they call a pinnace, with six oars; his servants, and horses, and baggage going in the ferry-boat.
The Fortunes And Misfortunes Of The Famous Moll Flanders Defoe, Daniel, 1661?-1731 1923
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An 'I'd ha' done it, too, only the pinnace from the flagship was just comin 'alongside.
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The name pinnace was applied to vessels having a wide range in tonnage, etc., from a craft of hardly more than ten or fifteen tons to one of sixty or eighty.
The Mayflower and Her Log; July 15, 1620-May 6, 1621 — Complete Azel Ames 1876
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Thither we went in a fine boat they call a pinnace, with six oars; his servants, and horses, and baggage going in the ferry-boat.
The Fortunes and Misfortunes of the Famous Moll Flanders Daniel Defoe 1696
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What shall we call the pinnace when she is launched, Mistress White? "
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The _Mary_ -- for so Fritz now called the pinnace -- had been ten days at sea, the wind had died away, and for some time scarcely a zephyr had ruffled the surface of the water, the sails were lazily flapping against the mast, and but for the currents, the voyagers would have been almost stationary.
Willis the Pilot Paul Adrien
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The pinnace was a big, roomy, and rather heavy boat, pulling ten oars, double banked, and mounting a nine-pounder gun in her bows.
The Pirate Slaver A Story of the West African Coast Harry Collingwood 1886
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That our pinnace was a vessel able to withstand such waves as would be met with in the ocean, can be believed when you remember that she was one half the size of the Goodspeed, which we counted a ship.
Richard of Jamestown : a Story of the Virginia Colony James Otis 1880
jaime_d commented on the word pinnace
From "Au Tombeau de Charles Fourier" by Guy Davenport
January 19, 2010