selvagee
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English
Etymology
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Pronunciation
Noun
selvagee (plural selvagees)
- (archaic, nautical) A skein or hank of rope yarns wound round with yarns or marline, used for stoppers, straps, etc.
- (Can we find and add a quotation of Herman Melville to this entry?)
- As the cable enters the hawse-hole, therefore, something must be constantly used, to keep this travelling chain attached to this travelling messenger; something that may be rapidly wound round both, so as to bind them together. The article used is called a selvagee. And what could be better adapted to the purpose? It is a slender, tapering, unstranded piece of rope prepared with much solicitude; peculiarly flexible; and wreathes and serpentines round the cable and messenger like an elegantly-modeled garter-snake round the twisted stalks of a vine.
- (Can we find and add a quotation of Herman Melville to this entry?)
Part or all of this entry has been imported from the 1913 edition of Webster’s Dictionary, which is now free of copyright and hence in the public domain. The imported definitions may be significantly out of date, and any more recent senses may be completely missing.
(See the entry for “selvagee”, in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913, →OCLC.)