Skip to content
ARCHIEENGLISH
LearnPlayWordsRanking
  • Learn
  • Play
  • Words
  • Ranking
  • Mine
← Vocabulary

halyard

UK/ˈhæljə(ɹ)d/US/ˈhæljə(ɹ)d/
nounC2Rare in speech; mostly a word you read · #12,486 of 15,258neutral

Other forms: halyards

A halyard is the rope that hauls a sail up. Ease the halyard, a jammed halyard, take up the halyard.

It runs from the head of the sail to the top of the mast and back down, and every sail has its own. The word came from haul plus yard by a misunderstanding: it was originally a haulier, and the ending was reshaped towards the yard it hauled.

U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 1st Class Eric Brown · Public domain

Definitions of halyard

  1. 1nounhalyardThe rope that hauls a sail up.C2

    “The sailor pulled on the halyard, and the mainsail rose up the mast.”

halyard is a rope.

Where it comes from

Middle English halier, from halen, to haul. The ending was reshaped towards yard by mistake.

  1. Middle English

    halier

  2. English, today

    halyard

Middle English halier, from halen + -iere, with misconstrual of -ier as yard. Compare lanyard.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practised in Sea & Sailing

Practise this word

halyard in the wild

  • In sailing, a halyard or halliard is a line (rope) that is used to hoist a ladder, sail, flag or yard.

    Halyard

  • Modern windsurfing sails incorporate a sleeve for the mast, and therefore do not have a halyard which tensions the top of the sail.

    Downhaul

  • The peak halyard is either bent to the gaff itself or to a wire gunter depending upon the mode of rigging.

    Peak halyard

  • A ring fairlead holds the halyard parallel to the mast so its cleat can be located near to the cockpit.

    Fairlead

From Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. These sentences were written by other people about their own subjects; they are here to show the word at work, not as anybody’s opinion.