Definitions

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

  • noun A small fore-and-aft sail hoisted abaft the foremast and mainmast in a storm to keep a ship's bow to the wind.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun A fore-and-aft sail set with a gaff and sometimes with a boom on the foremast and mainmast of ships, or on a small mast called a trysail-mast. See mast.

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

  • noun (Naut.) A fore-and-aft sail, bent to a gaff, and hoisted on a lower mast or on a small mast, called the trysail mast, close abaft a lower mast; -- used chiefly as a storm sail. Called also spencer.

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

  • noun nautical A small, strong 3-sided sail sometimes set in place of the mainsail in heavy weather.

Etymologies

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

[From obsolete try, a lying to, heaving to.]

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Examples

  • The boat does not have a storm trysail, which is a small sail used in high winds to maintain control and keep the bow to the wind.

    OVERBOARD ! MICHAEL J. TOUGIAS 2010

  • The boat does not have a storm trysail, which is a small sail used in high winds to maintain control and keep the bow to the wind.

    OVERBOARD ! MICHAEL J. TOUGIAS 2010

  • I pulled two of the tripping-lines, and two of the contraptions exploded into light and noise and at the same time ran automatically down the jigger-trysail-stays, and automatically fetched up at the ends of their lines.

    CHAPTER XLVII 2010

  • Of course each morning before daylight we shall lower all this apparatus to the deck, so that the men for'ard will not guess what we have up our sleeve, or, rather, what we have up on the trysail-stays.

    CHAPTER XLIV 2010

  • "Better rig that storm-trysail on the main, and a storm-jib," Grief said to the mate.

    A LITTLE ACCOUNTWITH SWITHIN HALL 2010

  • I judged her to be of about twenty tons; she had a trysail set and heavily reefed down.

    Movie Night 2010

  • Weber was taking down a trysail when an enormous wave blindsided the skipper, sending him sprawling across the deck, then over the boom, one foot becoming entangled in the lazyjacks.

    OVERBOARD ! MICHAEL J. TOUGIAS 2010

  • Weber was taking down a trysail when an enormous wave blindsided the skipper, sending him sprawling across the deck, then over the boom, one foot becoming entangled in the lazyjacks.

    OVERBOARD ! MICHAEL J. TOUGIAS 2010

  • After a very hard day's combat using only the storm jib and trysail, I finally hove to for a long night of furious wind.

    Aweigh 2004

  • After a very hard day's combat using only the storm jib and trysail, I finally hove to for a long night of furious wind.

    Aweigh 2004

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