CAPSTAN

Pronunciation (US):

(GB):

IPA (US):

 Dictionary entry overview: What does capstan mean? 

• CAPSTAN (noun)
  The noun CAPSTAN has 1 sense:

1. a windlass rotated in a horizontal plane around a vertical axis; used on ships for weighing anchor or raising heavy sails

  Familiarity information: CAPSTAN used as a noun is very rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• CAPSTAN (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

A windlass rotated in a horizontal plane around a vertical axis; used on ships for weighing anchor or raising heavy sails

Classified under:

Nouns denoting man-made objects

Hypernyms ("capstan" is a kind of...):

winch; windlass (lifting device consisting of a horizontal cylinder turned by a crank on which a cable or rope winds)

 Context examples 

There is the creaking of a chain, and the loud tinkle as the check of the capstan falls into the rachet.

(Dracula, by Bram Stoker)

With the same good fighting man he served at the Nile, where the men of his command sponged and rammed and trained until, when the last tricolour had come down, they hove up the sheet anchor and fell dead asleep upon the top of each other under the capstan bars.

(Rodney Stone, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

Why, so, he replied: you take a line ashore there on the other side at low water, take a turn about one of them big pines; bring it back, take a turn around the capstan, and lie to for the tide.

(Treasure Island, by Robert Louis Stevenson)

I don't know what I answered, or what they rejoined; but I saw hurry on the beach, and men running with ropes from a capstan that was there, and penetrating into a circle of figures that hid him from me.

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)

I remember him looking round the cover and whistling to himself as he did so, and then breaking out in that old sea-song that he sang so often afterwards, in the high, old tottering voice that seemed to have been tuned and broken at the capstan bars.

(Treasure Island, by Robert Louis Stevenson)