Afterguard

noun

noun ·Rare ·Advanced level

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    The seaman or seamen stationed on the poop or after part of a ship, to attend the after-sails. historical

    "There were times when the whole crew refused their duty; and we of the afterguard were twice got under arms—being the first time that ever I bore weapons—in the fear of mutiny."

  2. 2
    The members of a yacht's crew who attend to the aft sails

    "This is his sixth Cup campaign but his first as skipper, a position he inherited after the helmsman Russell Coutts, Butterworth’s longtime alter ego in the afterguard, bolted from Alinghi in 2004."

  3. 3
    A drudge; somebody tasked with menial work.

Example

More examples

"There were times when the whole crew refused their duty; and we of the afterguard were twice got under arms—being the first time that ever I bore weapons—in the fear of mutiny."

Etymology

From after- + guard.

Related phrases

after sails

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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.