Barque
noun ·Rare ·Advanced level
Definitions
- 1 A sailing vessel of three or more masts, with all masts but the sternmost square-rigged, the sternmost being fore-and-aft-rigged
"On being told, however, that the Norwegian barque Daphne was about to leave An-peng for Tamsui, I had my things taken on board, and we set sail a few hours later."
- 2 a sailing ship with 3 (or more) masts wordnet
- 3 Any small sailing vessel. archaic
- 4 A sailing vessel or boat of any kind. poetic
"Barque of phosphor On the palmy beach…"
Synonyms
All synonymsExample
More examples"Such were the delights which summer brought them, but when the autumn came, and the black grapes were covered with a thick bloom, some pirates of Tyre, who had put to sea in a Carian barque, so that they might not be taken for foreigners, approached the coast, and landed, armed with swords and bucklers."
Etymology
From Middle English barke (“boat”), borrowed from Middle French barque, itself borrowed from Italian barca or a Medieval Latin equivalent, from Late Latin barca, from Vulgar Latin barica, from Ancient Greek βᾶρις (bâris) 'Egyptian boat', from Coptic ⲃⲁⲁⲣⲉ (baare, “small boat”), from Demotic Egyptian br, from Egyptian bꜣjr (“transport ship, type of fish”), b-bA-A-y:r*Z1-P1. Doublet of bark, barge and baris. Possibly cognate with Spanish barco.
Related phrases
More for "barque"
Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.