halyard

What it means

1. nauticalA rope used to raise or lower a sail, flag, spar or yard.

   Uncleat the black main halyard to lower and remove the jib cover; remove the main halyard from the jib cover.

   (Can we date this quote?), “RS Quest Rigging Instructions”, in California State University, Sacramento, page 1

   2 more examples

   At last I got my knife and cut the halyards. The peak dropped instantly, a great belly of loose canvas floated broad upon the water […]

   1881–1882, Robert Louis Stevenson, Treasure Island, London; Paris: Cassell & Company, published 14 November 1883, →OCLC

   […]broad-shouldered men with hard red-beaked faces and huge hands coarsened by generations of straining on heavy oars and halyards,—men who feared only God and the sea-spirits of their strange mythology and were a law unto themselves, adventurers and bigots.

   1922, John Dos Passos, “A Novelist of Revolution”, in Rosinante to the Road Again, New York, N.Y.: George H[enry] Doran Company, →OCLC

2. firefightingA rope used to extend a ladder.

In a sentence

At last I got my knife and cut the halyards. The peak dropped instantly, a great belly of loose canvas floated broad upon the water […]

1881–1882, Robert Louis Stevenson, Treasure Island, London; Paris: Cassell & Company, published 14 November 1883, →OCLC

Where it comes from

1. Middle Englishhalier
2. Englishhalyard

Inherited from Middle English halier, from halen (“to haul”) + -iere (“-er”), with misconstrual of -ier as yard. Compare lanyard.