windlass
From Wiktionary, the free dictionary
Alternative forms
Etymology
From Middle English wyndlas, wyndelas, wyndlasse, wyndelasse, probably an alteration (due to Middle English windel) of Middle English windas, wyndas, wyndace, from Anglo-Norman windase, windeis and Old Northern French windas (compare Old French guindas, Medieval Latin windasius, windasa), from Old Norse vindáss (“windlass”, literally “winding-pole”), from vinda (“to wind”) + áss (“pole”). Compare Icelandic vindilass.
Pronunciation
- (UK) IPA(key): /ˈwɪnd.ləs/
Audio (Southern England): (file)
Noun
windlass (plural windlasses)
- Any of various forms of winch, in which a rope or cable is wound around a cylinder, used for lifting heavy weights
- A winding and circuitous way; a roundabout course.
- c. 1599–1602 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Tragedie of Hamlet, Prince of Denmarke”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act II, scene i], line 65:
- With windlasses and with assays of bias, / By indirections find directions out.
- An apparatus resembling a winch or windlass, for bending the bow of an arblast, or crossbow.
Derived terms
Translations
winch
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Verb
windlass (third-person singular simple present windlasses, present participle windlassing, simple past and past participle windlassed)
- To raise with, or as if with, a windlass; to use a windlass.
- 1882, Constance Gordon-Cumming, “Ningpo and the Buddhist Temples”, in The Century Magazine:
- A favoring breeze enabled us to sail all the way down the lake, and (having been windlassed across the haul-over) even down the canals.
- To take a roundabout course; to work warily or by indirect means.
- a. 1660, Henry Hammond, a sermon:
- He could not expect to allure him forward, and therefore drives him as far back as he can; that so he may be the more sure of him at the rebound; as a skilful woodsman, that by windlassing presently gets a shoot, which, without taking a compass and thereby a commodious stand, he could never have obtained.
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