cockboat

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English[edit]

Alternative forms[edit]

Etymology[edit]

From cog (a small boat).

Noun[edit]

cockboat (plural cockboats)

  1. (nautical) A small rowing boat, especially one pulled behind a larger ship, or used to ferry goods between a ship and the shore.
    • 1590, Edmund Spenser, “Book III, Canto VIII”, in The Faerie Queene. [], London: [] [John Wolfe] for William Ponsonbie, →OCLC:
      Haue care, I pray, to guide the cock-bote well, / Least worse on sea then vs on land befell.
    • 1874, Marcus Clarke, “Chapter V”, in For the Term of His Natural Life:
      The Malabar, that huge sea monster, in whose capacious belly so many human creatures lived and suffered, had dwindled to a walnut-shell, and yet beside her bulk how infinitely small had their own frail cockboat appeared as they shot out from under her towering stern!

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