verb ·Rare ·Advanced level

Definitions

Verb

1. 1
   To force (a sailing vessel) to change tack by dropping the lee-anchor and hauling in the anchor cable to swing the stern to windward. transitive

Etymology

From club + haul; derived from nautical clubbing (dragging an anchor along the seabed) and hauling (changing direction).

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