Hello, you have come here looking for the meaning of the word
mizzentopman. In DICTIOUS you will not only get to know all the dictionary meanings for the word
mizzentopman, but we will also tell you about its etymology, its characteristics and you will know how to say
mizzentopman in singular and plural. Everything you need to know about the word
mizzentopman you have here. The definition of the word
mizzentopman will help you to be more precise and correct when speaking or writing your texts. Knowing the definition of
mizzentopman, as well as those of other words, enriches your vocabulary and provides you with more and better linguistic resources.
English
Etymology
From mizzentop + man.
Noun
mizzentopman (plural mizzentopmen)
- A sailor assigned to the mizzentop on a sailing ship
1924, Herman Melville, chapter 16, in Billy Budd, London: Constable & Co.:[…] since the mizzentopmen having not to handle such breadths of heavy canvas as the lower sails on the main-mast and fore-mast, a young man if of the right stuff not only seems best adapted to duty there, but in fact is generally selected for the captaincy of that top, and the company under him are light hands and often but striplings.
2011, Leon Fink, Sweatshops at Sea: Merchant Seamen in the World's First Globalized Industry, from 1812 to the Present, University of North Carolina Press, caption, Chapter 2, p. 46:This illustration for Herman Melville's White Jacket (1850) of the flogging of a nineteen-year-old mizzen-top man […] on a U.S. naval ship—based on Melville's own Pacific voyage of 1843-44—helped stoke a humanitarian campaign against such physical punishment.