Chantey

noun

noun ·Rare ·Advanced level

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    Alternative form of shanty (sailor's song). alt-of, alternative

    "Then we had a mouth-organ solo or two, which naturally led on to songs. My turn came. I struck up the first verse of a sailor chantey as possessing at least the interest of novelty. Oh once we were a-sailing, a-sailing were we; Blow high, blow low, what care we; And we were a-sailing to see what we could see, Down on the coast of the High Barbaree."

  2. 2
    a rhythmical work song originally sung by sailors wordnet

Example

More examples

"Then we had a mouth-organ solo or two, which naturally led on to songs. My turn came. I struck up the first verse of a sailor chantey as possessing at least the interest of novelty. Oh once we were a-sailing, a-sailing were we; Blow high, blow low, what care we; And we were a-sailing to see what we could see, Down on the coast of the High Barbaree."

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