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Great Expectations vocabulary
8 nautical terms (boats, equipment, etc.)
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astern
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tags: [nautical]
► definition
Definition:behind or toward the rear of a ship or aircraft
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Uses:
The gunwale was lipping astern. Several times we shipped a little water, and my breeches and the tails of my coat were all soaking wet before we had gone a hundred yards.
Robert Louis Stevenson. Treasure Island (1883)
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head winds are far more prevalent than winds from astern (that is, if you never violate the Pythagorean maxim), so for the most part the Commodore on the quarter-deck gets his atmosphere at second hand from the sailors on the forecastle. He thinks he breathes it first; but not so.
Herman Melville. Moby Dick
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The ball bobbed unheeded on the wake of swells, floated under by the bridgepiers. Not such damn fools. Also the day I threw that stale cake out of the Erin’s King picked it up in the wake fifty yards astern. Live by their wits. They wheeled, flapping.
James Joyce. Ulysses
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