mainsail
USMAYN-sayl/ˈmeɪnseɪl/
Pluralmainsails
- 1On a sailing vessel, the biggest sail, or the only one if just one is carried.
The skipper hauled in the mainsail to catch the freshening breeze.
Racing crews replace their mainsails frequently as the fabric stretches and loses shape.
Note
A plain compound, main plus sail, naming the working heart of the rig: set on and abaft the mainmast, it supplies the primary driving force on most fore-and-aft rigs. Sailors reef it to shorten sail in heavy weather, stow it by folding along its battens from the head down, and sometimes scandalize it. Mrs. Dominic D. Daly, writing in 1887, explains that as reefing a sail at both ends.
Use it in a sentence
Write your own sentence with mainsail, and AI will tell you whether it fits and which meaning you used.
Origin
Formed from 'main' and 'sail'.