What does "athwartships" mean?

Across the vessel sideways, i.e. in a direction at right angles to the fore-and-aft line of the vessel.

What is a synonym for "athwartships"?

Common synonyms include: across, athwart, athwartship, crisscross, cross, cross grained.

adv

adv ·Rare ·Advanced level

Adverb

1
Across the vessel sideways, i.e. in a direction at right angles to the fore-and-aft line of the vessel. not-comparable
"to place / fix / stow something athwartships; to pace the bridge athwartships"

"to place / fix / stow something athwartships; to pace the bridge athwartships"

From athwart (“across”) + ship + -s as an adverbial ending.

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