Marline
noun, verb ·Rare ·Advanced level
Definitions
- 1 A light all-purpose cord commonly used to bind the end of a larger rope, to prevent fraying.
"1749 (Sunday 26th May), John Newton's journal A young man, who has been the whole voyage out of irons, first on account of a large ulcer, and since for his seeming good behaviour, gave them a large marline spike down the gratings, but was happily seen by one of the people."
- 2 a small usually tarred line of 2 strands wordnet
- 3 Twine used similarly.
- 1 To wind marline around.
"to marline a rope"
Synonyms
All synonymsExample
More examples"1749 (Sunday 26th May), John Newton's journal A young man, who has been the whole voyage out of irons, first on account of a large ulcer, and since for his seeming good behaviour, gave them a large marline spike down the gratings, but was happily seen by one of the people."
Etymology
From Middle English merlin, from Middle Low German marling, from Middle Dutch marlijn (“cord”), from marlen (“secure, fasten”), frequentative of maren (“to moor”), from Proto-Germanic *mairōną (“to moor, fasten to”), from Proto-Indo-European *mer-.
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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.