The Sailor's Word-Book / An Alphabetical Digest of Nautical Terms, including Some More Especially Military and Scientific, but Useful to Seamen; as well as Archaisms of Early Voyagers, etc.

by W. H. Smyth

SQUARE-SAILS. Colloquially applied to the courses; but the term may be used for any four-cornered sail extended to a yard suspended by the middle.

SQUARE-STERNED. Implies a stern where the wing-transom is at right angles with the stern-post. (See [Pink] and [Round Stern].)

SQUARE-STERNED AND BRITISH BUILT. A phrase to express the peculiar excellence of our first-class merchantmen.

SQUARE TIMBERS. Those timbers which stand square with, or perpendicular to, the keel.

SQUARE-TOPSAIL SLOOP. Sloops which carry standing yards.

SQUARE TUCK. The after-part of a ship's bottom, when terminated in the same direction up and down as the wing-transom.

SQUARE YARDS! The order to attend to the lifts and braces, for going before the wind.—To square a yard. In working ship, means to bring it in square by the marks on the braces. Figuratively, to settle accounts.

SQUARING THE DEAD-EYES. Bringing them to a line parallel to the sheer of the ship.

SQUARING THE RATLINES. Seeing that all are horizontal and ship-shape.

SQUATTER. The flutter of sea-birds along the water. Also, one who settles, without a title. The hybrid but expressive Americanism absquatulate, means to clear off; the reverse of to squat.